How Does Ball Possession Affect the Physical Demands in Spanish LaLiga? A Multilevel Approach

Evidence for a new model of the complex interrelationship of ball possession, physical intensity and performance in elite soccer

“…End-of-season points may be a more sensitive scalar measure, 31 and thus provide a more accurate reflection of team performance, compared to the ordinal nature of final league ranking. Possession and physical data for each team were averaged based on all available matches within that specific season (34 ± 5 matches, range [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Therefore, possession and physical metrics were derived from a total of 1374 league matches (2016/17 n = 255, 2017/18 n = 380, 2018/19 n = 371 and 2019/20 n = 368).…”

“…29 Calculating the physical metrics as rates of distance covered (i.e., meters per minute), that provides a measure of physical intensity, when in-possession/ out-of-possession (i.e., normalizing for time in-possession/ out-of-possession) may help to determine whether higher physical intensity in-possession/out-of-possession is related to performance. Moreover, in order to fully understand how both possession and the physical metrics influence performance, it may be informative to first determine how these factors interact with each other, 30 before considering how each is related to performance, and subsequently the mechanism by which possession and physical metrics may combine to effect performance (i.e., direct effects and indirect (mediated) by one another).…”