Agreement Between Dribble and Change of Direction Deficits to Assess Directional Asymmetry in Young Elite Football Players

Athos Trecroci,Tindaro Bongiovanni,Damiano Formenti,Giulio Pasta,Giampietro Alberti,Luca Cavaggioni

doi:10.3390/sym12050787

Athos Trecroci, Tindaro Bongiovanni + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/sym12050787

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Journal: Symmetry	Publication Date: May 8, 2020
Citations: 10	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Milan, University of Insubria

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the agreement between asymmetries of dribble and change of direction (COD) deficits and to determine their potential difference to each other. Sixteen young elite football players were recruited and tested for sprint (over 10 m), dribbling (90°CODdribbling) and COD (90°CODrunning) performance in dominant (fastest) and non-dominant (slowest) directions. Dribble and COD deficits were computed to express dribbling and COD ability without the influence of acceleration. The asymmetric index (AI%) of both dribble and COD deficits were obtained for both directions. The level of agreement between dribble and COD deficits was assessed by Cohen’s kappa statistic (κ). Results showed that AI% measured by dribble and COD deficits presented a poor level of agreement (κ = −0.159), indicating their imbalance did not favor the same direction. Moreover, AI% of the dribble deficit was significantly higher than those of the COD deficit. This study demonstrated that asymmetries in dribbling and change of direction performance (measured by dribble and COD deficit) were not in agreement to favor the same direction, also displaying a significant difference to each other. Practitioners should consider the task-specificity of asymmetry to reduce the imbalance in dribbling and COD performance.

Highlights

The combined asymmetrical and unpredictable nature of football prompts each player dribbling or changing direction in multiple directions within the pitch, which is unlikely to be distributed during a match [1]
Additional inherent factors may contribute to influencing the players’ movements within the pitch favoring predominantly their dominant side or direction to the detriment of the non-dominant one [2]. It would be advantageous for team sport athletes to express similar dribbling and change of direction (COD) performance toward different directions [3], they often manifest a certain degree of asymmetry, even throughout the season [1,4], that should be opportunely quantified
In 90◦ CODrunning test, significant differences were observed between D and ND for total running time and COD deficit with large and moderate effects, respectively

Summary

Introduction

The combined asymmetrical and unpredictable nature of football prompts each player dribbling or changing direction in multiple directions (chaotically) within the pitch, which is unlikely to be distributed during a match [1]. Additional inherent factors (e.g., playing position, tactical constraints and players’ leg or directional preference) may contribute to influencing the players’ movements within the pitch favoring predominantly their dominant side or direction to the detriment of the non-dominant one [2] It would be advantageous for team sport athletes to express similar dribbling and change of direction (COD) performance toward different directions (right versus left) [3], they often manifest a certain degree of asymmetry, even throughout the season [1,4], that should be opportunely quantified. It has been previously observed that completion time might be biased by an individual’s sprint capacity either via dribbling [7,8] or changing direction assessment [9,10]. Dribble and COD deficits have been proposed to provide practitioners with a more valid and isolated measure within a field-based context, limiting the impact of acceleration [7,8,9,10]

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