Vanda Correia

How small-sided and conditioned games enhance acquisition of movement and decision-making skills

This article summarizes research from an ecological dynamics program of work on team sports exemplifying how small-sided and conditioned games (SSCG) can enhance skill acquisition and decision-making processes during training. The data highlighted show how constraints of different SSCG can facilitate emergence of continuous interpersonal coordination tendencies during practice to benefit team game players.

Sports Teams as Superorganisms

Significant criticisms have emerged on the way that collective behaviours in team sports have been traditionally evaluated. A major recommendation has been for future research and practice to focus on the interpersonal relationships developed between team players during performance. Most research has typically investigated team game performance in subunits (attack or defence), rather than considering the interactions of performers within the whole team. In this paper, we offer the view that team performance analysis could benefit from the adoption of biological models used to explain how repeated interactions between grouping individuals scale to emergent social collective behaviours. We highlight the advantages of conceptualizing sports teams as functional integrated ‘super-organisms’ and discuss innovative measurement tools, which might be used to capture the superorganismic properties of sports teams. These tools are suitable for revealing the idiosyncratic collective behaviours underlying the cooperative and competitive tendencies of different sports teams, particularly their coordination of labour and the most frequent channels of communication and patterns of interaction between team players. The principles and tools presented here can serve as the basis for novel approaches and applications of performance analysis devoted to understanding sports teams as cohesive, functioning, high-order organisms exhibiting their own peculiar behavioural patterns.

Competing together: Assessing the dynamics of team–team and player–team synchrony in professional association football

This study investigated movement synchronization of players within and between teams during competitive association football performance. Cluster phase analysis was introduced as a method to assess synchronies between whole teams and between individual players with their team as a function of time, ball possession and field direction. Measures of dispersion (SD) and regularity (sample entropy - SampEn - and cross sample entropy - Cross-SampEn) were used to quantify the magnitude and structure of synchrony. Large synergistic relations within each professional team sport collective were observed, particularly in the longitudinal direction of the field (0.89±0.12) compared to the lateral direction (0.73±0.16, p<.01). The coupling between the group measures of the two teams also revealed that changes in the synchrony of each team were intimately related (Cross-SampEn values of 0.02±0.01). Interestingly, ball possession did not influence team synchronization levels. In player-team synchronization, individuals tended to be coordinated under near in-phase modes with team behavior (mean ranges between -7 and 5° of relative phase). The magnitudes of variations were low, but more irregular in time, for the longitudinal (SD: 18±3°; SampEn: 0.07±0.01), compared to the lateral direction (SD: 28±5°; SampEn: 0.06±0.01, p<.05) on-field. Increases in regularity were also observed between the first (SampEn: 0.07±0.01) and second half (SampEn: 0.06±0.01, p<.05) of the observed competitive game. Findings suggest that the method of analysis introduced in the current study may offer a suitable tool for examining teams synchronization behaviors and the mutual influence of each teams cohesiveness in competing social collectives.

Spatial-temporal constraints on decision-making during shooting performance in the team sport of futsal

Abstract In this paper we examined the influence of opposing players constraining the decision-making of an attacker during shooting performance in futsal. Performance during 10 competitive matches was recorded and examined from the moment a shot was taken until the ball was intercepted or entered the goal in sequences of play: ending in a goal, a goalkeepers save, or an interception by the nearest defender. The variables under scrutiny in this study were (i) the distance of each player to the balls trajectory, (ii) the time for the ball to arrive at that same point (i.e. the interception point), and (iii), the required movement velocity of the nearest defender and the goalkeeper to intercept the ball. Results showed that values of distance from a defender and goalkeeper to the interception points were significantly lower when they intercepted the ball. The time of ball arrival at the interception point of the defender was also lower when the ball was intercepted. The required velocities of the nearest outfield defender and the goalkeeper to intercept the ball were significantly lower during plays in which they intercepted the ball, than in plays in which the ball was not intercepted. Our results suggest that researchers and practitioners should consider simultaneously both space and time in analysis of interceptive actions in team sports. The required movement velocities of the opponents to intercept the ball are reliable spatial-temporal variables constraining decision-making during shooting performance in team sports like futsal.

From recording discrete actions to studying continuous goal-directed behaviours in team sports

Abstract This paper highlights the importance of examining interpersonal interactions in performance analysis of team sports, predicated on the relationship between perception and action, compared to the traditional cataloguing of actions by individual performers. We discuss how ecological dynamics may provide a potential unifying theoretical and empirical framework to achieve this re-emphasis in research. With reference to data from illustrative studies on performance analysis and sport expertise, we critically evaluate some of the main assumptions and methodological approaches with regard to understanding how information influences action and decision-making during team sports performance. Current data demonstrate how the understanding of performance behaviours in team sports by sport scientists and practitioners may be enhanced with a re-emphasis in research on the dynamics of emergent ongoing interactions. Ecological dynamics provides formal and theoretically grounded descriptions of player-environment interactions with respect to key performance goals and the unfolding information of competitive performance. Developing these formal descriptions and explanations of sport performance may provide a significant contribution to the field of performance analysis, supporting design and intervention in both research and practice.

Eco-Dynamics Approach to the study of Team Sports Performance~!2009-07-05~!2009-11-01~!2010-04-29~!

The main goal of performance analysis in team sports has been the identification of data frequencies or sequences of actions in a temporal line, based on the assemblage of numerous discrete variables. This focus may be deemed as not displaying the foremost team sport feature, i.e., the dynamics of the interaction between two teams. In order to better understand the dynamic patterns of the game, the methods commonly applied must be furthered in a functional perspective. Underpinned in the Ecological Dynamics approach to decision making in sport, this paper regards performance analysis as a process of synthesis and parsimonious explanation of game’s functional nature. Accordingly, we argue the importance of the following three aspects: i) game must be viewed considering different levels of analysis; ii) there is a functional role of variability in players’ behaviour that must be included in the analysis; iii) human behaviour is better understood if we consider how the dynamics reflects individual and collective perceptual-action couplings.

Effects of manipulations of player numbers vs. field dimensions on inter-individual coordination during small-sided games in youth football

The relative space per player formulated in small-sided and conditioned games can be manipulated either by promoting variations in player numbers or by modifying field dimensions. In this study we analysed how the same relative spaces per player, obtained through manipulations of player numbers and field dimensions, influenced inter-individual coordination. The positional data (GPS, 10 Hz) of 24 U-15 yrs performing in three different relative spaces per player (118, 133 and 152m2) was used. Inter-individual behavioural measures included: (i) effective relative space per player, (ii) radius of free movement; (iii) numerical relations inside each player’s relative space per player; and (iv) players’ spatial distribution variability. Magnitude-based inferences were used to analyse the practical significance of the selected variables. Results showed that manipulations of player numbers elicited more free space in the vicinity of each player. However, more advantageous numerical relations adjacent to each individual player and broader individual spatial distributions on field were observed during manipulations of field dimensions. These findings highlight the complex nature of performance behaviours captured by the co-adaptation of players to surrounding spatial constraints. Sport pedagogists should carefully evaluate the use of player numbers and field dimensions as strategies to simulate constraints of specific game contexts.

Informational constraints on interceptive actions of elite football goalkeepers in 1v1 dyads during competitive performance

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to examine whether perceptual variables can provide informational constraints for the goalkeepers to intercept the ball successfully in 1v1 dyads. Video images of 42 actions (1v1 in direct shots) were selected randomly from different matches and divided into conceded goals (n = 20) and saved actions (n = 22) to investigate interceptive actions of 20 goalkeepers in the English Premier League in season 2013–2014. Time to Contact (TTC) of the closing distance gap between shooter and goalkeeper was obtained by digitising actions in the 18-yard penalty box. Statistical analyses revealed that, in sequences of play resulting in an intercepted shot at goal, goalkeepers closed down outfield players in the X axis, whereas when a goal was conceded, there was a significantly delayed movement by goalkeepers toward the shooters in this plane. The results of canonical correlations showed that a decreasing distance between a shooter and goalkeeper, and accompanied reduction in relative interpersonal velocity followed a temporal pattern. Findings of this study showed how perception of key informational constraints on dyadic system relations, such as TTC, interpersonal distance and relative velocity, constrain elite goalkeepers’ interceptive actions, playing an important role in successful performance.