Abstract
Scanning in football (soccer) denotes an active head movement where a player’s face is temporarily directed away from the ball to gather information in preparation for subsequently engaging with the ball. The aim of this study was to learn more about the ways that 27 elite professional football players in an English Premier League club use scanning in competitive matches, the conditions under which this behavior is exhibited, and the relationships between these behaviors and performance. Players were filmed across 21 matches, producing a total number of 9,574 individual ball possessions for analysis. Close-up video analyses of scanning show positional differences (with central midfielders and central defenders scanning most frequently, forwards least) and contextual differences (with relatively lower scanning frequency in situations with tight opponent pressure, in positions wide in the field and closer to the opponent’s goal, and under certain game state conditions). Players scan more frequently prior to giving passes than when they dribble, shoot, or only receive it, as well as prior to more long/forward passes compared to short/backward ones, although these differences are small. A Bayesian hierarchical model, which accounts for individual player differences and pass difficulty, suggests that the more a player scans, the higher the probability of completing a pass. In conclusion, match demands are likely to constrain the extent to which highly elite players scan, and scanning seems to have a small, but positive role in elite football players’ performance.
Highlights
Football is a highly dynamic, fluid, and complex sport, and players’ ability to pick up and use visual information from teammates and opponents may, logically, be a key to performance
The players performed on average 3.0 scans (±2.1) in the last 10 s before receiving the ball, giving a mean scan frequency of 0.44 scans/s (±0.30)
Pairwise comparison Dunn tests show the scan frequencies for all positional roles were significantly different from each other with effect sizes ranging from trivial (d = 0.16, central defenders and wingers) to medium (d = 0.56, central midfielders and side defenders)
Summary
Football (soccer) is a highly dynamic, fluid, and complex sport, and players’ ability to pick up and use visual information from teammates and opponents may, logically, be a key to performance. Scanning in Premier League Footballers visual search strategies These studies are carried out with eye tracking devices where players view and respond to photographs or video films positioned in front of them in a laboratory setting. For example, in a study of 44 professional and semiprofessional players in England (Roca et al, 2018), the most creative players adopted a broader attention span, by showing more visual fixations of shorter duration than the less creative players This frequent change in fixation location makes sense as, in team ball sports, players are required to shift attention between different objects, most notably between the ball and other players (Jordet, 2005a,b; Mann et al, 2019). A substantial gap in the literature on perceptual and cognitive processes in sport is the lack of research focusing on what athletes are doing on the field in real competitive events (outside the laboratory)
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