“…Our study speculated that social factors were deemed to be critical, due to the fans' proximity to the playing area and the more constant, loud, inspiring sounds from the crowd, where enthusiastic cheers and chants can inspire entertaining, attacking play, and encourage home players to try harder (Almeida and Leite, 2021;McCarrick et al, 2021). Notably, our study highlighted that the overall increase in sprint distance was achieved without spectators, which is contrary to the previous study that suggested sprinting, acceleration, and deceleration distances did not change or showed a clear reduction compared to playing with spectators in the most soccer leagues (Brito de Souza et al, 2021;Rampinini et al, 2021;Santana et al, 2021;García-calvo et al, 2022). A possible explanation is that ball possessions ended without realizing the pre-prepared tactical strategies, which caused the counterattacks from the opponent.…”