Soccer Science and Performance Coaching (eBook)

INTRODUCTION: APPLYING SCIENCE IN COACHING

When discussing the roles of coaching, performance or medical practitioners within football, it is possible to generally define the process across three main focus areas: PREPARE – PERFORM – RECOVER. As a result, one of this book’s priorities was to take the readers through interesting and modern training sections, highlighting the novel coaching approaches researched and used throughout the footballing world and delivered by some of the most innovative leaders in their specific areas of expertise surrounding performance coaching and football science.

Before diving into the first section, the cultural and societal impacts of football have been stressed alongside the game’s progression from its origin to the now globally unrecognizable sport loved by millions of fans. Within this introduction, the focus was to expose the reader to the sporting evolution of the game and how the financial strength of its attraction has not only professionalized football to a higher level, but how it has driven a sporting media explosion around the world. This section not only covers the game’s colossal socio-cultural development, but correspondingly how the changes have influenced the player development process along the way.

The reader then moves into the first key segment of the book, PREPARE. It is here that all individuals involved within the game – be they fans, players, coaches or performance practitioners – should understand the actual processes involved with the preparation of football athletes from a physiological, technical, tactical and psychological perspective. Furthermore, understanding the actual demands imposed on the players both within the training environment and competitive match-play is something that is of paramount importance to adequately PREPARE to PERFORM. The PREPARE section will investigate and cover the game demands in significant detail, revealing difference across both male and female game aspects while exploring further the hormonal and biochemical outcomes associated with high-level football performance. Having attended to the foundations and targets of what is required to PERFORM and the demands endured by players physically, the book moves into the psychological and mental skill developmental areas from a preparation perspective.

Described by many within the game as one of the most untapped, or under-utilised, areas of sporting performance, especially football, how leading practitioners in this specific area are researching, investigating and subsequently preparing their players across the world is fundamental to the reader in order to enhance their knowledge and practical capability thereafter. Bringing a unique look at psychological training intervention to maximise the development of creative players is something that all coaches, irrespective of their specialist area, crave within the game. The PERFORM section suggests in great detail not only how future talent is developed from a creative mind perspective, but also how incorporating visual perception and specific cognitive behaviour may identify the next generation of elite-level players and enable better coaching processes. From a PREPARE perspective, the PERFORM section includes a chapter on an extremely hot topic: long-term athletic development. Within all sporting contexts, especially within current elite football settings, never has there been such an investment into academy-based structures and talent management or identification. By presenting an improved insight into maximising skill development while embedding a long-term athletic development process within the talent phase of the player pathway, the book provides a modern and successful working process in this key area.

Having gained an insight into the preparation of players through a broad but modern, innovative spectrum, moving towards the second key section of the book, PERFORM builds on the PREPARE foundations already discussed. This segment highlights and exposes exactly what it takes to PERFORM at the top level of the game and how practitioners or coaches can provide the platform from which to progress the performance level of the players. Gaining a better or complete understanding of player capability through testing and monitoring in order to maximise performance, manage health and wellbeing, as well as stimulating enhancement through specific adaptation training is covered in this section of the book. Exposing the readers to the areas of training load management and invisible monitoring will provide a detailed overview of what coaches or performance practitioners can do to ensure their players remain in the best state to optimise performance, while at the same time reducing the injury risk to players. Chapters in the PERFORM section cover key topics that are fundamental to the development and management of players in a ‘high-performance’ environment. This section also introduces how artificial intelligence (AI) and data science in the football world can assist the ever-growing data management processes used by industry specialists. Describing the monitoring and assessment tools used within the game on a daily basis, plus the use of AI in decision-making aspects, the next section, and arguably one of the most important factors when it comes in the form of preparing to PERFORM, is training methodology. As a result of many contemporary research studies investigating performance markers and injury rates in elite sport, it is compelling to suggest that if the daily training content is poorly managed through an insufficient methodological approach, inadequate training session design or underconditioned players, then not only subsequent poor performance prevails, but also significant rates of injury. In order for both individuals and teams to reproduce a high-performance level and PERFORM continually through regular and congested periods each week for multiple seasons across a career, significant cohesive elements must align.

Individuals involved with the development of football players (coaches or support staff) have seen the understanding, progression and implementation of strength and conditioning, speed development and high-intensity football–specific endurance training exponentially over the last decade. Furthermore, developing their knowledge of where these components fit within the methodology of training, how to maximise specific training games in the weekly microcycle program, as well as periodising a training phase or understanding the benefits of tapering strategies in assisting their players to arrive on a match day in optimal condition may be of equal or more importance. Optimising the physical profile and status of players is only a part of the performance target, as from a coaching, performance and practitioners’ viewpoint, where the physical outcomes fit into the tactical and technical development of the player or team as a whole is fundamental to performance progression. The end of this PERFORM section is dedicated to the intricacies of monitoring the technical and tactical loads across the training week and further exposure to the tactical strategies used within the game at the elite level. This section was developed with the thought of providing a clearer view for how the tactical elements of the game may enhance practitioners’ decision making and strategy when it comes to designing specific multifunctional training sessions or drills to fit a specific game model or tactical plan.

The last section of the book is RECOVER. This part of the book outlines in greater depth the nutritional requirements of the sporting demands in order to maximise performance and PREPARE, PERFORM and RECOVER the players. This section highlights in a very practical way key nutritional theories and interventional strategies that are currently used at the very top level of play, while detailing the importance nutrition plays across all aspects of performance coaching. Optimizing the fuelling and recovery of training and competitive match-play is of great significance if players are to ever reach the performance goals set. The impact of nutrition on physical exertion, psychological decision-making processes while recovering the body between training and competitive match-play, emphasise its fundamental role as a key concept of football science. As nutrition is covered within the RECOVER section, it is vital that all individuals within the sporting world have a sound understanding concerning specific recovery modalities available to football athletes and how the research concerning this area can be used to maximise the efficiency and recovery of players.

As the book takes the readers through this latter section focused on elements of the game that fall under the RECOVER theme, based on the exponential growth of fixture demand imposed on players, the subject understood as fixture congestion is currently under the microscope and debated not only within clubs themselves, but very prominently discussed by technical staff members within the media. Fixture demand is becoming a fundamental aspect of elite-level football and a topic that, as a result, requires clear strategies to not only develop robustness in players, but also to navigate a squad through the demands faced. Based on new research findings in this area, it is vitally important to understand the physiology and biochemical aspects that come as a result of fixture congestive periods. Provision of recent research and focused areas to consider when faced with periods of fixture congestion in football are included here. The very last chapter within the RECOVER section of the book addresses the incidence and rehabilitation of injury in the football world and research supporting these topics. In addition to recovery from...