National Soccer Team Research Articles

The dynamic interplay between burnout and sleep among elite blind soccer players

The dynamic pattern between burnout and sleep among athletes is unknown. This longitudinal survey examined the interplay between burnout and sleep among blind elite soccer players. China national blind soccer team players (n = 10) completed measures on burnout and sleep quality through interview at baseline (month 1), and followed at months 2, 3, 4, and 5. The results of dynamic p-technique analysis, using Bayesian estimation, showed a credible relationship between burnout and sleep quality. Also, burnout had a credible lagged effect on subsequent sleep quality whereas sleep quality did not have a credible lagged effect on burnout. The results suggest that burnout and sleep are not reciprocally related and burnout may be a risk factor of sleep problems among athletes.

Photos from the Quarter

This sample of photos, selected from hundreds viewed by JPS, aims to convey a sense of Palestinian life during the quarter 16 February–15 May 2017. The Palestinian national women's soccer team, popular support for hunger strikers in Israeli prisons, wildfires, and a human rights film festival in Gaza are all included, along with scenes from daily life.

Going Solo: the spectre of the 1999ers and Hope Solo as the ‘conscious pariah’

Although US goalkeeper, Hope Solo, had guided the women’s national soccer team to the semi-finals of the 2007 Women’s World Cup, head coach Greg Ryan benched Solo in favour of 1999 World Cup winning goalkeeper, Briana Scurry. The US lost, 4 – 0, the worst loss ever in World Cup play. The loss did not capture news headlines; rather, Hope Solo’s post-game comments about Ryan’s decision to bench her went viral. I contend that Solo’s outburst interrupted the historical narrative of the US women’s national soccer team. Solo’s action revealed an oppressive team culture of female containment. In a 30-second sound bite, Solo disrupted the discourse of power on the team and in the media, temporarily producing a space for various conceptions of the female athlete to be recognized.

FIFA's double hijabophobia: A colonialist and Islamist alliance racializing Muslim women soccer players

This paper focuses on FIFA's ‘hijab ban’ crisis, or the disqualification of the Iranian women's national soccer team from the 2012 Olympics because the players wore a head cover. Utilizing Arab, Muslim and anti-racist feminist theories, I analyze a colonialist and Islamist patriarchal alliance built on two gendering and racializing logics. I refer to these overlapping logics as ‘double hijabophobia.’ Both FIFA and Muslim-majority nations used medicalized and cultural notions of the hijab, safety and dress laws. Double hijabophobia denies Muslim women players their bodily integrity and excludes them from world football. This analysis also recognizes Muslim women athletes who are working to overcome colonialist and Islamist racializing and gendering logics in sport.

The Pitch Rather Than the Pit: Investor Inattention, Trading Activity, and FIFA World Cup Matches

This paper analyzes stock market trading in 15 countries during the 2010 and 2014 soccer FIFA World Cups. We find evidence for substantial investor inattention during these major sporting events. The lack of attention for the trading pit is particularly large when the national soccer team is competing, with traded volumes declining by as much as 48%. During national team matches, prices on local stock markets can temporarily decouple from global financial market developments. These findings suggest that major sporting events can act as a laboratory in which to investigate investor inattention.

Legally Irrelevant Factors in Judicial Decision-Making: Battle Deaths and the Imposition of the Death Penalty in Nazi Germany

We study the effect of legally irrelevant events on the sentencing outcomes of around 2,500 individual defendants, heard before the People's Court in Nazi Germany. Our analysis exploits exogeneous variation in battle deaths and estimates their effect on the likelihood of receiving the death penalty. According to our results, higher German fatalities on the battlefield systematically increased the chances of receiving the death penalty. We show that decisions by experienced judges were less affected by battle deaths, while judges who were more ideologically committed to the regime were more likely to impose the death penalty in response to hearing news of higher German fatalities. Our results are not driven by particular types of offenses or defendants, time periods, or changes in arrest patterns and are robust to the use of major bombing raids of German cities instead of battle deaths. We also find some evidence that victories of the German national soccer team decreased the chances of capital punishment.

USING MOBILE DEVICES TO MONITOR HEALTH AND WELLBEING, IN AND OUT OF COMPETITION, IN ELITE INTERNATIONAL WOMENS SOCCER

BackgroundIn recent years mobile devices (smartphones) have been used to gather subjective and objective international athlete health and wellbeing data via athlete self-report measures (ASRM).ObjectiveTo implement a system of ASRM...

The Broadcasting Demand for the Spanish National Soccer Team

This article analyzes the broadcasting demand in Spain for the Spanish national soccer team. The variability in audience figures suggests supplementing the ordinary least squares estimation with quantile regressions to understand the effect of the explanatory variables across the conditioned distribution of television audiences. The results show that variables associated with the sporting relevance of each game and the reputation of the opponent are significant, while consumer habits have little influence and uncertainty of outcome is not significant. The different degrees of influence of the variables across all quantiles confirm the heterogeneous nature of demand.

Laterality related to the successive selection of Dutch national youth soccer players

ABSTRACTIn the general population, estimates of left-foot preference are around 20%. In soccer, specific tasks create positional demands, requiring 40% of the players to be left-footed. Whether and how this is related to the selection of players is unknown. To examine the successive selection of soccer players for Dutch national youth teams in relation to foot preference, 280 youth players (age = 16.2 ± 1.08 years) were monitored from the U16 through the U19 teams over the last 5 years. No difference in successive selection between left- and right-footed players was found (p < 0.05). Regardless of foot preference, more than 50% of the selected players were deselected out of a national youth team after 2 years. On average, 31% of the national youth players were left-footed, which is higher than expected, based on population estimates (χ2 (1) = 37.49, p < 0.001, w = 0.27). However, there was an under-representation of left-footed players, based on expected positional demands (i.e., attack, midfield, defence) (χ2 (1) = 16.83, p < 0.001, w = 0.18). The conclusion is that left-foot preference increases the probability of selection in Dutch national youth soccer teams.

Football cultural events and stock market returns: the case of FIFA World Cup

Over the past two decades, cultural sporting mega-events such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup have captured a leading position in the consumption-based economic development policies of many late-capitalist societies (Fehle et al., 2005; Chang et al., 2012). Recent studies have pointed out the importance of sporting mega-events on the analysis of investor moods (Martínez and Román, 2014; Kaplanski and Levy, 2010; Edmans et al., 2007). Moving from these evidences, this paper aims at analysing whether the effect of Italian national soccer team results in the FIFA World Cup competition between 2002-2014 influenced the trend of national stock FTSE MIB indexes. Results demonstrate that football results have a strong impact on investor moods: sporting events in general have a significant effect on investor behaviours. In particular, football game results influence stock market returns since soccer is a consistent part of many people's lives.

23 Players, 23 Voices

This study’s purpose was to contribute to the understanding of athlete self-presentation on Twitter by focusing on the communication strategies of an entire team of female athletes during an international mega-event, with special attention given to how the athletes’ communication changed in the surrounding time periods. Content analysis was performed on tweets from all 23 players on the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team during 30-day time periods before, during, and after the 2015 World Cup. Findings revealed an overall tendency towards backstage communication, with some commonalities between the self-presentation styles utilized by individual athletes on the team. In addition, there were organic, intuitive changes in the players’ self-presentation across various time periods. Further, analysis of follower engagement via retweets indicated greater interest in athletes’ backstage communication compared to front stage. These findings yield implications for future research and practical application, which are examined in the discussion.

Periodization in Team Sport Games - A Review of Current Knowledge and Modern Trends in Competitive Sports

The main goal of this study was to present a review of current knowledge and modern trends in periodization of the training process in team sports. The research objectives were: an analysis of various aspects of periodization of the annual training cycle for elite athletes practicing team sport games, an attempt to determine both the examined and unexamined issues related with periodization of training as well as to indicate directions for further research, and finally, presentation of different training loads and competitions in micro-, meso- and macrocycles. The research consisted of the analysis and generalization of the bibliography, methods of monitoring training and competition loads of the Polish national U17 female soccer team in the seasons 2011/2012 and 2012/2013, as well as of the female basketball division one club in the season 2014/2015. Findings of the present study indicate resolved as well as unresolved aspects of annual training cycle periodization in team sport games and provide information on the types of training and competitive workload planning in micro-, meso- and macrocycles.

On some philosophical foundations of the disappointing performances of the African soccer teams in world competitions

For decades, African senior club and national soccer teams, involved in world competitions (FIFA World Cup and FIFA Club World Cup), have failed to perform beyond mere honorable appearances. In this paper, we explore two of the fundamental causes underlying these disappointing performances. First, we examine the dilemma which forces almost all the African federations to overlook the Africa-based players in favor of those based outside the continent. Second, we show that the roots of the poor performances of the African teams go far beyond this crippling dilemma. Indeed, we argue, the persistent underperformances of African teams appear to be rather consistent with the fate of postcolonial Africa itself, a continent marred in an acute identity crisis. In fact, this crisis essentially stems from the relentless brain drain inflicted on the African soccer world which has so far dispersed its best talents all across Europe and beyond through the naturalization of its soccer diaspora. In addition, Africa has shown no ability to offer any type of attractive alternatives to the talented sons and daughters of its diaspora as well as to any other world class players. This ineptitude, coupled with Africa’s inability to leave behind its nostalgic Senghorian soccer essentialism, condemns the continent to perpetual poor performances. Therefore, we suggest that the African national federations and their respective governments move away from their deeply held soccer essentialism in order to begin to move toward some kind of soccer existentialism alongside such European countries as France, Germany, Switzerland, and The Netherlands which appear to acknowledge, perhaps reluctantly, the invaluable contributions made by the African (and other world) diaspora to the success of not only their local and national leagues but also their national teams.

The construction of citizenship and the public provision of electricity during the 2014 World Cup in Ghana

ABSTRACTWhy did the Ghanaian state go to such extraordinary lengths to facilitate the reliable broadcast of the World Cup in 2014? During a period of frequent power outages, Ghana swapped power with regional neighbours and directed major domestic industries to reduce production in order to allow Ghanaians to watch their national soccer team compete in the World Cup. This paper investigates the politics of the public service provision of electricity in Ghana. We focus on the short-term crisis during the 2014 World Cup to reveal the citizens' and politicians' expectations about electricity as a public good. Drawing on an analysis of archival documents, Ghanaian newspapers, and interviews with government, business, and NGO officials in the energy sector, we argue that the Ghanaian state historically has created the expectation of electricity as a right of national citizenship and explore how this intersects with competitive party politics today.

Performance Analysis Tool for network analysis on team sports: A case study of FIFA Soccer World Cup 2014

The study of teammates’ interaction on team sports has been growing in the last few years. Nevertheless, no specific software has been developed so far to do this in a user-friendly manner. Therefore, the aim of this study was to introduce a software called the Performance Analysis Tool that allows the user to quickly record the teammates’ interaction and automatically generate the outputs in adjacency matrices that can then be imported by social network analysis software such as SocNetV. Moreover, it was also the aim of this study to process the data in a real-life scenario, thus the seven matches of the German national soccer team in the FIFA World Cup 2014 were used to test the software and then compute the network metrics. A dataset of 3032 passes between teammates in seven soccer matches was generated with the Performance Analysis Tool software, which permitted a study of the network structure. The analysis of variance of centrality metrics between different tactical positions was made. The two-way multivariate analysis of variance revealed that the strategic position ([Formula: see text]; F = 24.394; p = 0.001; [Formula: see text]; large effect size) had significant main effects on the centrality measures. No statistical differences were found in the phase of competition ([Formula: see text]; F = 0.097; p = 0.907; [Formula: see text]; very small effect size). The network approach revealed that the German national soccer team based their attacking process on positional attacks and not in counter-attack, and the midfielders were the prominent players followed by the central defenders. The Performance Analysis Tool software allowed the user to quickly identify the teammates’ interactions and extract the network data for process and analysis.

Corrigendum

Feminization of sport audiences and fans? Evidence from German men’s national soccer team International Review for the Sociology of Sport DOI 10.1177/1012690215612457

Successful, sexy, popular: Athletic performance and physical attractiveness as determinants of public interest in male and female soccer players

This study examines to what extent the public attention directed at individual male and female players of various national soccer teams is influenced by (a) their athletic performance and (b) their physical attractiveness. The results prove that public interest in athletes depends significantly on performance and attractiveness. However, those athletes who both perform strongly and are attractive by far draw the greatest public attention. Against expectations, gender differences do not figure in this: the attractiveness of male soccer players is equally as important for popularity as it is of female soccer players.

Take time to review pay equity practices in your athletics department

From members of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to the recent settlements at Tennessee and North Florida, pay equity is back in the news.

Race, ethnicity and German identity: a media analysis of the 2010 world cup men's national soccer team

ABSTRACTEnjoying a surge of national pride, the German media celebrated the 2010 German World Cup team's success in South Africa. A dominant theme in this coverage was the ‘immigration background’ of 11 of the 23 players on the team and their claim to German identity despite their ethnic diversity. Amid debate over the changing nature of German citizenship, the national team's ‘multicultural kickers’ became the focal point for those who wished to re-frame German identity. This article examines German newspaper and magazine coverage of the national soccer team emphasizing the role that media played in constructing competing definitions of the German citizen and nation.

O status da partida e a amplitude de circulação da bola da seleção espanhola de futebol na Copa do Mundo Fifa® 2010

This paper aims to compare the width of ball circulation of the Spanish National Soccer Team, through the number of corridor variations (NVC) in different match statuses during the 2010 Fifa® World Cup. The sample comprised 850 offensive sequences of 7 matches of the team in the tournament. Data collection was performed through observation of TV matches. Data were registered in Excel 2007. Descriptive analysis was performed for NVC. Kolmogorov‐Smirnov test was used to verify data distribution. Kruskal‐Wallis test (p<0.05) was used to compare NVC in the match statuses. IBM SPSS v.20 was used for data treatment. NVC did not presented significant differences regarding the match status (p=0.328). It is concluded that match status did not influence Spain's width of ball circulation.