The effect of small-sided games with different levels of opposition on the tactical behaviour of young footballers with different levels of sport expertise

Abstract

To optimize players' tactical abilities, coaches need to design training sessions with representative learning tasks, such as, small-sided games. Moreover, it is necessary to adapt the complexity of the tasks to the skill level of the athletes to maximally improve their perceptual, visual and attentive abilities. The objective of this study was to analyze the effect of two teaching programs, each utilizing modified games with varied levels of opposition, on decision-making and action execution in young players with different levels of sports expertise. 19 football players (U12), separated into two ability groups (Average versus Low skill-level), participated in a series of training sessions that were spread over 4 phases: Pre-intervention 1, Intervention 1 (teaching program based on modified games with numerical superiority in attack), Pre-intervention 2 and Intervention 2 (teaching program based on modified games with numerical equality). Each intervention phase lasted 14 sessions. Decision-making and the execution of pass action during league matches over the same period were evaluated using the Game Performance Evaluation Tool (GPET). The Average skill-level group showed significant differences after the first intervention in decision-making and execution of the pass action (decision-making, p = .015; execution, p = .031), but not after the second intervention (decision-making, p = 1.000; execution, p = 1.000). For the Low skill-level group, significant differences were only observed in the execution of passing between the first and last phases (p = .014). These findings seem to indicate that for groups with an average level of expertise, training with numerical superiority in attack provides players with more time to make better decisions and to better execute actions. However, for lower-level groups programs may take longer to facilitate improvement. Nevertheless, numerical equality did not result in improvement for either group.

Space configuration and numerical relationship during professional soccer matches: a proposal for small-sided games design

“…Our results indicated greater values for defensive superiority, considerably different from those observed in literature studies that have focused on evaluating games with numerical equality [1,5,12,14]. On the other hand, Práxedes et al [9] showed that a training program using numerical superiority was better to improve the decision making in U12 players than a numerical equality program. therefore, further studies may investigate numerical inferiority/superiority in accordance with the space configuration reported in the present study and the consequences in physical, technical, and tactical demands of the match.…”

“…SSGs improve the physical, technical, and tactical dimension simultaneously [2]. Recently, studies have focused on the effects of different SGG formats and task conditions on changes in the physiological [1,[3][4][5], technical [3,4,6], physical [7,8], and tactical performance [4,6,9,10], on manipulating the space, the number of players, the number of ball touches per player [1,[4][5][6][7][9][10][11][12], and on the impact of training programs involving SSGs [5,12].…”

Decision-Making in Youth Team-Sports Players: A Systematic Review

“…Of the 10 studies that analyzed the effects of training programs on decision-making (Table 4), 4 of them used a nonlinear pedagogy-based program to induce changes in the decisions made by participants [29,30,51,52]. Three of the studies used immersive three-dimensional videos to stimulate the decisions made by participants [22,53,54], and two of the studies used video feedback and questioning [48,49].…”

Development of Defensive Actions in Small-Sided and Conditioned Games With Offensive Purposes in Futsal

“…The study design consisted of an intragroup design, from a quasiexperimental methodology, where two research phases were considered. In the first phase, named preintervention phase, the values of decision-making and execution were recorded for the defensive actions analyzed [decision-making (DM) and execution (Ex)] in three competition matches, as indicated by previous studies (Práxedes et al, 2018b). This first measurement allows to establish the previous level of the players.…”