Virtual Reality Technology in Football Coaching: Barriers and Opportunities

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology has the potential to become the next performance measure in coaching by enhancing players’ perceptual ability. This paper aims to analyze elite coaches’ and performance analysts’ perceptions of barriers to and opportunities for the adaptation of VR technology in football coaching. Following a pilot study, interviews were conducted with six elite coaches and performance analysts. Perceptions of the key barriers to VR’s widespread adoption were the following: lack of conclusive evidence, practicality, quality of software, and cognitive overload. VR needs to overcome these barriers to be successfully integrated into contemporary coaching. Key opportunities included virtual models of play, for example, a virtual environment created by VR technology that exposes players to situations experienced in real environments. In addition, VR may be used to enhance player development by facilitating an environment in which players can develop their visual exploratory behavior and can acquire task-relevant information, resulting in faster decision making. Opportunities regarding player rehabilitation and solving isolated incidents were also identified. The authors conclude that VR technology has a developing role in coaching and has the potential to become a valuable supplement to current coaching methods for those actively seeking competitive advantage through technological advancement.

Perceptions of professional soccer coaches, support staff and players toward virtual reality and the factors that modify their intention to use it

“…virtual reality, 2D reality etc) to assess key cognitive attributes such as decision making in soccer are limited [ 6 ]. Despite limited research, the application of virtual reality (VR) in professional sport is becoming increasingly common [ 7 ], largely due to it becoming more commercially available [ 8 ]. Virtual reality is defined as a computer-simulated environment that aims to induce a sense of being mentally and/or physically present in another place [ 7 , 9 ].…”

“…To that end, only one study has explored the perceptions of VR use in professional soccer. Thatcher et al [ 8 ] identified key opportunities for VR implementation including its use during rehabilitation and for youth development, as well as barriers to its use, such as a lack of empirical evidence and the practicality of using it. However, the opinions of soccer coaches interviewed by Thatcher et al [ 8 ] varied markedly on the efficacy of VR, and more importantly the aims of the study did not address the mechanistic factors that influence coaches’ intentions to use the technology.…”

“…Thatcher et al [ 8 ] identified key opportunities for VR implementation including its use during rehabilitation and for youth development, as well as barriers to its use, such as a lack of empirical evidence and the practicality of using it. However, the opinions of soccer coaches interviewed by Thatcher et al [ 8 ] varied markedly on the efficacy of VR, and more importantly the aims of the study did not address the mechanistic factors that influence coaches’ intentions to use the technology. In order to understand intention, studies on technology acceptance typically refer to theoretical models from the social sciences specifically designed to examine behavioural intention to use technology [ 17 ].…”

“…Although the research by Thatcher et al [ 8 ] provides valuable information on the facilitators and barriers to VR adoption from the perspective of coaching staff, understanding the perceptions of players is of equal importance as they are a key stakeholder in the adoption of a new technology [ 19 ]. Consequently, if the perceptions between those who implement the technology (coaches and support staff) differs to those who will use the technology (players), then it is possible that buy-in to the use of VR in professional soccer could be limited.…”

Analysis and Research on the Timeliness of Virtual Reality Sports Actions in Football Scenes

“…In addition, it has also been suggested that target activation and distractor inhibition may occur in parallel during tracking and that this attentional allocation feature is primarily related to task difficulty and varies flexibly with task demands (tracking load) [20]. When task difficulty is low, visual attention is not necessary for tracking task completion, but increasing task difficulty leads to competition for attention in both tracking and detection tasks.…”