From individual to collective tactical behaviour in youth football: Effects of players roles and field location

Abstract

The main purpose of this thesis was to investigate the tactical behaviour in football in order to gain more understanding on how demands on the field constrain the way that the players expose possibilities for action. The aim was also to investigate the effects of players’ roles (e.g., defenders, midfielders, and attackers) in different field locations and sub-phases of game. The findings support the idea that it is important to understand how manipulated constraints in team games practice can influence the tactical behaviour of players and how players explore such variations. Fifteen U15 male players (age 13.2 ± 1.03 years; years of practice 4.2 ± 1.10 years) from the same club participated in this study (2016/2017 season). For the purposes of the analysis, on advice from the coaching staff, participants were categorised according to their main playing role, resulting in sub-samples of five defenders (centre-back and full-backs), seven midfielders (centre midfielders and lateral midfielders) and three attackers (forwards). The theoretical framework of this study is based on ecological dynamics. Accordingly, tactical behaviours of players and teams result from information exchanges that emerge among players, based on their action capabilities (physical, technical, and tactical). Ecological dynamics views competitive performance of sports teams as emerging from the sharing of available affordances (opportunities or possibilities for action) that exist in a performance environment. To optimize players’ tactical abilities, coaches need to design training sessions with representative learning tasks that ensure that practice has similar perceptual-action relationship to competitive matches. Toward this goal, Small-sided and conditioned games (SSCGs) are commonly used in football training. SSCGs reproduce randomness, unpredictability, and complexity of the formal match and may involve 1-vs-1, 2-vs-1, and 3-vs-3 formats. SSCGs offer various possibilities for manipulating key informational task constraints (e.g., number of players, pitch dimensions etc.) to induce different training responses according to the learning aim. In the first study it was observed that field location as well as players’ role constrained players’ tactical behaviour for dribbling and shooting in 1-vs-1 football situations. In the second study, in the analysis of the 2-vs-1 football situations, similar results were observed. A general main effect of field location was observed with changes in spatial-temporal relations of players between field locations. Related to participants’ roles, defenders revealed subtle differences on their tactical behaviour when compared with midfielders and attackers. At the end, in the third study, an effect of players’ roles in teams’ tactical actions of play and effectiveness were observed between teams of defenders, midfielders and attackers. Due to differences in performance context, players with different playing roles seem to exploit affordances and perform differently in competitive 3-vs-3 SSCGs (small-sided and conditioned games). Based on the findings of this doctoral dissertation, implications for the design of practice tasks can be advocated. Attackers and defenders can be exposed to different relative positions to the goal for training dribbling and shooting, with changes in the preferred foot of both attackers and defenders. That personal constraint manipulation will encourage greater exploration of possibilities for action of attackers to shoot when presented with a more open or closed angle to the goal. Such a manipulation may even encourage participants to explore shooting with the non-preferred foot, depending on the affordances offered by information from the positioning of defenders, relative to the goal. Also, for defenders, such a manipulation will help them to improve their defensive positioning relative to the goal, and to identify and prevent the use of the preferred foot of attackers. This exploration of capabilities for action of other performers, based on some key information, will allow learners to become more effective and flexible in their behaviours. Players’ roles seem to have an impact on their current capabilities for action. Thus, to improve player performance, early exposure to diverse experiences in the contexts of play and in required perception and action capacities instead of specialization (as defenders or attackers) can/may help learners to improve their adaptability to the different performance contexts to which they are exposed during competition.