Abstract
The aim of this study was to perform a systematic review of the scientific literature on handball match analysis and to identify potential research areas for future work. Data were collected from Web of Science, MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, Scopus, EBSCO, and ProQuest databases. The initial search found 148 journal articles. Only the papers focused on handball match analysis regarding tactical and technical aspects were considered, for a final list of 25 publications. The complexity approach under which each considered publication was conducted was taken into account (i.e., static vs. dynamic). Therein, authors, main analysis, number of performance indicators under study, considered situational variables, statistics and/or analysis methods, type of competition, number of matches, and sex of participants were distinguished for classification purposes. Research on handball match analysis has evolved over the years, mainly due to the great technological advances. Studies conducted under the classical static complexity approach are the most extended. Studies performed under the relatively new dynamic complexity approach are growing. The present review identified the following main guidelines for future work on handball match analysis: conducting more studies focused on the defensive profile; analyzing handball national leagues and international club competitions; performing more studies in female handball; including game situational variables into the analysis (i.e., game type, match status, game location, quality of opposition, game period); incorporating critical events of the game into the analysis (e.g., team timeouts, exclusions); and, conducting further research from the promising dynamic complexity perspective.
Highlights
The analysis of sport competitions aims to provide objective and reliable performance indicators that can help coaching staff to better understand how their athletes and/or teams can improve performance and, thereby, adapt their intervention in the training sessions
The complexity approach under which each considered publication was conducted was taken into account
The actions of the players and teams during the match are recorded using notation systems that have evolved extraordinarily from the early simple hand notation systems, which only allowed registering some of the actions of the match, to the current semiautomatic or automatic computerized video-based notation systems, which allow an easy recording of the majority of significant actions that occur in a match. Despite this substantial progress in the amount and ease of data collection, the outcome of these notation processes is a more or less thorough set of descriptive statistics, usually based on frequencies and percentages of different performance indicators, which only provides information about what has happened at the end of the match, without disclosing the process of how this has happened
Summary
The analysis of sport competitions aims to provide objective and reliable performance indicators (both individual and collective) that can help coaching staff to better understand how their athletes and/or teams can improve performance and, thereby, adapt their intervention in the training sessions. The actions of the players and teams during the match are recorded using notation systems that have evolved extraordinarily from the early simple hand notation systems, which only allowed registering some of the actions of the match, to the current semiautomatic or automatic computerized video-based notation systems, which allow an easy recording of the majority of significant actions that occur in a match Despite this substantial progress in the amount and ease of data collection, the outcome of these notation processes is a more or less thorough set of descriptive statistics, usually based on frequencies and percentages of different performance indicators, which only provides information about what has happened at the end of the match, without disclosing the process of how this has happened. Published studies have analyzed different performance indicators in relation to aspects of handball such as: scoring efficiency, collective tactics, discriminatory variables between winning and losing teams, situational efficiency predictor variables, technical success variables, team’s success match statistics according to match location, etc. The results of the study showed that the players on the position of
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