Visual exploratory activity and resultant behavioural analysis of youth midfield soccer players

Abstract

Eldridge D, Pulling C, Robins M. Visual exploratory activity and resultant behavioural analysis of youth midfield soccer players. J. Hum. Sport Exerc. Vol. 8, No. Proc3, pp. S560-S577, 2013. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of visual exploratory activity, prior to receiving the ball in the middle third of the pitch, on the actions of youth midfield soccer players. The visual exploratory activity of three youth central midfield players was examined using a player cam approach, which in turn, was related to each player's actions, after receiving the ball, through the use of a wide angle perspective. SportsCode Elite software was used to analyse all player actions post-event. Players participated in five training games, each 20 minutes in duration. The player's actions were divided into five themes: (1) maintaining possession, (2) loss of possession, (3) field location of maintained possessions (4) defensive pressure, and, (5) turning. Associations between visual exploratory activity and each of the resultant behavioural themes were examined using a chi-squared test (p<0.05). The findings of the study revealed that the players performed more forward passes, executed more passes into the attacking half, performed more turns when opportunities arose, and experienced less defensive pressure when performing visual exploratory activity prior to receiving the ball (p<0.01). There is evidence to suggest that coaches should encourage players to perform visual exploratory activity prior to receiving possession of the football. Moreover, coaches should be acutely aware that visual exploratory activity can influence the technical and tactical aspects of performance, and, consequently, this aspect should be considered an important facet to aid player development.

The impact of ball recovery type, location of ball recovery and duration of possession on the outcomes of possessions in the English Premier League and the Spanish La Liga

“…The location in which possession was gained ('ball recovery zone') was manually coded according to 12 specific pitch zones, labelled as the 'left defence', 'centre defence', 'right defence', 'left pre-defence', 'centre pre-defence', 'right pre-defence', 'left pre-attack', 'centre pre-attack', 'right pre-attack', 'left attack', 'centre attack', and 'right attack' (Eldridge et al 2013;Barreira et al 2014b) (Figure 1).…”

Read-the-game: System for skill-based visual exploratory activity assessment with a full body virtual reality soccer simulation

“…That is, players must move their heads and bodies actively [10]. Additionally, players cannot grasp more visual information than what is available in their immediate range of vision, which is limited to 180 degrees with turning the head or body [23]. Hence, players must engage in VEA.…”

Giving Inertial Sensor Data Context for Communication in Applied Settings: An Example of Visual Exploration in Football

“…Given the importance of head movements for visual perception and prospective control of movements [6,8], access to this data could be very important for player learning and development. However, unless the data is able to be communicated to coaches and players, the data is not able to be used to its full potential.…”

“…Typically, however, this method has various limitations that restrict the practical application of any research findings [1,5]. A small amount of research has investigated the exploratory head movements of footballers while playing in representative environments [6][7][8]. This research shows the importance of exploratory head movement for performance, and, as data was collected in situ, also gives an understanding of the actual behaviours players demonstrate while playing.…”

“…This research shows the importance of exploratory head movement for performance, and, as data was collected in situ, also gives an understanding of the actual behaviours players demonstrate while playing. Unfortunately, current methodologies for researching head movements in football are limited to a third party manually counting head turns captured by video [6][7][8]. Given the difficulty of manually counting such fast and complex movements, this method of data collection likely results in a degree of error which reduces the accuracy of head movement quantification in sporting environments [6,9].…”