Effects on collective behaviour and locomotor and neuromuscular response in young players by varying the length of the pitch in 11-a-side football

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe the effects on collective behaviour and the physical response of young elite football players (Under 15) in the same 11 versus 11 task in three different pitch lengths (100, 75 and 50 m, LSG100, LSG75 and LSG50, respectively), keeping the width constant (60 m). The intra-team variables were: convex hull (CH), stretch index (SI), width (W), length (L) and length/width (L/W). The inter-team variables were calculated by using the 20 outfield players: CH2, W2, L2, L/W2 and DC (distance between centroids). The physical variables were: maximum speed (Vmax), number of accelerations (Acc) and decelerations (Dec) and total distance (TD). The results showed small (LSG100 > LSG75) and moderate–long differences (LSG100 > LSG50) for CH, SI and L. There was a moderate increase in DC and W2 (LSG50 > LSG75) and a moderate decrease in SI2, CH2, SI, L and CH (LSG75 > LSG50). The entropy was higher in SSG50 > LSG75 > LSG100. On a conditional level, the values showed differences between the three formats studied, showing more similarities between LSG50 and LSG100 than with LSG75. The main conclusion of the study was that the variation in the dimensions of the pitch caused a non-linear variation in the behavioural and conditional response in teams and players.

Integrating physical and tactical factors in football using positional data: a systematic review

“…The reviewed quasi-experimental studies researched training sets and match settings. Small sided-games (SSG) was the most common training task in the studies, with only three articles addressing medium-sided (MSG) and large-sided games (LSG) ( Machado et al, 2020 ; Folgado, Gonçalves & Sampaio, 2018 ; Gonçalves et al, 2017 ; Jara et al, 2019 ; Nieto et al, 2022 ; Praça et al, 2016 ), respectively. Thus, SSG formats have been further explored in the literature, mainly five- and six-sided game formats.…”

“…Authors should prioritise tracking devices with sampling frequencies above 10 Hz shape with an accelerometer ( Gómez-Carmona et al, 2020 ; Rico-González et al, 2020 ). The latest GPS devices already recommend a sampling frequency of 10–18 Hz, specifically 10 Hz GPS units (WIMU PRO; RealTrack Systems, Almeria, Spain) ( Canton et al, 2021 ; Machado et al, 2022 ), 10 Hz GPS (S5; Catapult Innovations, Melbourne, Australia) ( Folgado et al, 2019 ; Nieto et al, 2022 ), 10 Hz GPS (Polar Team Pro, Kempele, Finland) ( Praça et al, 2021 ), 15 Hz GPS (SPIPRO; GPSports, Canberra, ACT, Australia) ( Coutinho et al, 2017 ; Praça et al, 2016 ; Ric et al, 2016a ) and 18.18 Hz GPS (GPEXE GK; Exelio SRL, Udine, Italy) ( Jara et al, 2019 ). LPM devices and semiautomatic video tracking system used in the surveyed studies were the Prozone ® (ProZone Holdings Ltd, Leeds, UK) ( Folgado et al, 2015 ) and the Inmotio Object Tracking ® (BV., Amsterdam, The Netherlands) ( Olthof, Frencken & Lemmink, 2018 ).…”

Description of the Collective Behavior in Competition of Young Soccer Players Under-16 (U-16), Under-17 (U-17), Under-19 (U-19), and Under-23 (U-23), Considering the Areas of the Pitch and Phases of the Game

“…The record of the players positioning from which CB was calculated; for which WIMU global positioning devices were used, those files were downloaded in SPRO, version 983 (RealTrack Systems, Almería, Spain). Figure 1 represents the CBs that were coded (Depth, Stretch Index, Convex Hull, Length and Width), following proposals of previous works (20).…”