Is there meaningful influence from situational and environmental factors on the physical and technical activity of elite football players? Evidence from the data of 5 consecutive seasons of the German Bundesliga

Abstract

The study aimed to identify the effects of situational (match location, match outcome and strength of team/opponent team) and environmental (ambient temperature, relative humidity, WBGT, ground and weather condition) factors on the physical and technical activity of elite football on individual playing positions. Physical and technical activity were collected from 779 football players competing in the German Bundesliga during 5 domestic seasons, from 2014/2015 to 2018/2019, totalling 1530 matches. The data on players’ physical and technical activity was taken from the IMPIRE AG system. Based on the available data, 11 variables were selected to quantify the match activity profiles of players. The results showed that situational variables had major effects on the technical performance (especially number of passes performed) but minor effects on physical performance. In turn, among the analysed environmental factors, temperature is the most sensitive, which affects the Total Distance and Sprint Efforts of players in all five positions. This investigation demonstrated that, given that passing is a key technical activity in modern football, players and training staff should be particularly aware that passing maybe affected by situational variables. Professional players are able to react and adapt to various environmental conditions, modifying physical activity depending on the needs in German Bundesliga. These results could help coaches and analysts to better understand the influences of situational and environmental variables on individual playing positions during the evaluation of players’ physical and technical performance.

Analysis of Running Performance in the Offensive and Defensive Phases of the Game: Is It Associated with the Team Achievement in the UEFA Champions League?

“…Previous studies which have investigated the RP without the context of the ball possession have reported that RPs vary according to playing positions due the different tactical roles during the soccer match [8,10,13,39]. Similarly, the present study analysed the RP in the context of the ball possession and found significant differences among playing positions in the RP during both the AP (i.e., when the team has the ball in their possession) and DP (i.e., when the opponent has the ball in their possession) of the game.…”

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that players regularly transit between brief bouts of high-intensity running and longer periods of low-intensity running [1,7]. These performances can be affected by different factors, such as the player's playing position in the game [8][9][10], physical capacities [7,11,12], tactical formations [13,14] and technical level [15]. In addition, contextual variables, such as the match status (win, draw, lose), location (home, away) and opponents' level (top, middle, bottom), impact the RP [16][17][18].…”

Effects of Match Location, Quality of Opposition and Match Outcome on Match Running Performance in a Portuguese Professional Football Team

“…Additionally, using tracking systems to monitor match demands has become a hot topic of research, referring to work rate, activity profile or match running performance [5,9,11,12]. Several studies quantified the match running performance across national professional leagues, such as the English [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], Italian [3,22,23], Spanish [19,[24][25][26], French [20,27,28], German [29][30][31][32], Brazilian [33,34], Norwegian [35,36], Danish [37] and Australian leagues [38,39]. The literature also focused on the European Champions League [40][41][42][43][44], UEFA Cup/Europe League [41,44] and the World Cup [45][46][47].…”

The Effect of the COVID-19 Lockdown on the Position-Specific Match Running Performance of Professional Football Players; Preliminary Observational Study

“…Physical performance in football is commonly analyzed by quantifying the match running performance (MRP), which includes the total distance covered, distances covered in various speed zones, and acceleration rates [5][6][7][8][9][10]. For example, it is well known that football players can cover between 9 and 14 km, performing 0.7-3.9 km of high-speed distance and 0.2-0.6 km of sprint distance, with ~600 accelerations, during matches [11][12][13][14][15].…”