Shared Situational Awareness in a Professional Soccer Team: An Explorative Analysis of Post-Performance Interviews.

Gaute S Schei,Rune Giske

doi:10.3390/ijerph17249203

Abstract

Sport science research has done little to elaborate on the cognitive factors that turn a collection of individual players into a coordinated elite team. The purpose of this paper is to clarify if the players and coach of an elite soccer team express shared situational awareness. Ten players and one coach were exposed to twelve video pictures from a previous soccer match, and their statements for each picture were recorded and analyzed using a qualitative approach. Two of five game situations were with ball possession and three out of seven were without ball possession; the player statements are contradictory, with a high threat for inadequate coordination. In seven of the twelve game situations, the players’ statements coincided and expressed a shared situational awareness, with good opportunities for adequate defensive and offensive coordination. In two of the game situations, there was a high threat for inadequate coordination. There was consensus among 9 out of 10 players, but the player with the divergent statement was central in the situation. The procedure followed in the study could be used to elucidate if a team has shared situational awareness and clarify in which situations there exists discrepancies and data that can be used to improve team coordination on and off the field.

Highlights

Soccer teams can be described as action teams, where performance is characterized by rapid, complex, and coordinated task behavior [1], and where the team dynamically adapts proactively and reactively to the environments within which they operate [2]
When the respondents were asked if they experienced that the team was influenced by a shared mental model, some of the players were unsure about the question
McComb [51] suggests that mental model convergence may be the key to understanding how individuals are transformed into team members, and the results show that the coach is on the same page as the majority of the players in all of the exposed videos, except video number two

Summary

Introduction

Soccer teams can be described as action teams, where performance is characterized by rapid, complex, and coordinated task behavior [1], and where the team dynamically adapts proactively and reactively to the environments within which they operate [2]. Coordination between team members becomes critical, considering how the team as an entity dynamically solves defensive and offensive tasks, where different team members primarily undertake different tasks [3]. Cannon-Bowers, Salas, and Converse [8] describe the SMM as knowledge structures held by members of a team that enable them to form accurate explanations and expectations of the task by coordinating their actions and adapting their behavior to the demands of the task and other team members. Public Health 2020, 17, 9203; doi:10.3390/ijerph17249203 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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