Abstract
This study analyzed the spatial-temporal interactions that sustained 2-vs-1 contexts in football at different field locations near the goal. Fifteen male players (under 15 years, age 13.2 ± 1.03 years, years of practice 4.2 ± 1.10 years), 5 defenders, 7 midfielders, and 3 attackers, participated in the study. Each participant performed a game to simulate a 2-vs-1 sub-phase as a ball carrier, second attacker, and defender at three different field locations, resulting in a total number of 142 trials. The movements of participants in each trial were recorded and digitized with TACTO software. Values of interpersonal distance between the ball carrier and defender and interpersonal angles between players and between the goal target, defender, and ball carrier were calculated. The results revealed a general main effect of field location. Generally, the middle zone revealed the lowest values of interpersonal distance and angle between players and the right zone and the highest values of interpersonal distance between players and interpersonal angle between players and the goal. Related with participants’ roles, defenders revealed subtle differences as attackers on interpersonal distances and relative angles compared with midfielders and attackers. Findings supported that field location is a key constraint of players’ performance and that players’ role constraint performance effectiveness in football.
Highlights
Team sports have been investigated, as complex adaptive systems, with the aim of describing and explaining emergent behaviors of players from an ecological dynamics perspective
A team game has been conceptualized as a complex adaptive system whose behaviors are driven or perturbed by interactions of multiple, smaller sub-systems composed of attackers and defenders interacting under constraints (Travassos et al, 2013b)
IABDA and medium values for IAGDB. These findings contrasted with data reported in previous research on performance in 1-vs-1 sub phases, in which higher values of ID and greater relative angles between players and the goal were observed in the middle zone, compared to performance in the other zones
Summary
Team sports have been investigated, as complex adaptive systems, with the aim of describing and explaining emergent behaviors of players from an ecological dynamics perspective This approach requires analysis of the continuous interactions between attacking and defending players who, fundamentally, compete to gain/retain possession of the ball and move it into favorable attacking positions in critical scoring spaces in the playing area (Araújo and Davids, 2016). McGarry (2009) highlighted the dynamical nature of these continuous interactions, which can be observed at different levels of analysis from the entire competitive context to relevant game sub-phases (i.e., 1-vs-1, 2-vs-1, 3-vs-2, etc.) For this reason, a team game has been conceptualized as a complex adaptive system whose behaviors are driven or perturbed by interactions of multiple, smaller sub-systems composed of attackers and defenders interacting under constraints (Travassos et al, 2013b). These task constraints include the number of players involved (Silva et al, 2014), the field dimensions (Vilar et al, 2014a), the number of goals (Travassos et al, 2014a), or even contextual performance constraints such as game pace or match outcome (Sampaio et al, 2013)
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