Movement Variability in Soccer Training (eBook)

Soccer is an invasion team sport in which the team in possession aims to progress down the field toward the goal and create goal scoring opportunities, while the team without possession looks to stay compact and restrict the available space, intending to protect their goal and recover possession of the ball (Grehaigne et al., 1997). Two opposing teams, each composed of eleven players (including the goalkeeper), compete in space and time to gain an advantage over their opponents. In the search for this space, players develop cooperative and competitive interactions with their teammates and opponents (McGarry et al., 2002). For example, the team in possession attempts to use the entire pitch space to attack and increase their distance from the nearest defender, allowing more time to decide how best to perform. The defending team stays compact and attempts to put pressure on the opponent with the ball by decreasing the available space (i.e., prevent player progression in the pitch) and time to restrict the possibility of the player in possession of the ball in exploring the best offensive options (e.g., passing and dribbling). The players from the same team must work together to develop functionally collective behaviors that allow them to pursue a collective goal, while at the same time competing with the opponents in search of spatial and temporal dominance (Grehaigne et al., 1997; Passos et al., 2016).

Performance in soccer results from a continuous process of co-adaptation between the players and teams in the search for functional movement behaviors (Araujo & Davids, 2016; Araújo et al., 2006; Passos et al., 2016). That is, the players belonging to one team will adjust their behavior in relation to their individual characteristics; for example, if the left fullback is a player characterized by lower displacement speed and faces a technically developed (1vs1 skills) winger who possesses high sprinting ability, the team may be positioned closer to the left corridor when defending. Similarly, while attacking, if the defending team retreats close to their target, this may imply that the offensive team explores more of the lateral spaces of the pitch to destabilize the defensive team (co-adaptation in the search for functional behaviors). Based on these assumptions, performance has been conceived and analyzed from the perspective of how players adjust their movement behavior according to the various configurations of play (Folgado et al., 2014) and to changes in the environment (Travassos et al., 2012a). That is, players coordinate their actions in space and time with their teammates according to the available information, such as the distance to target (Vilar et al., 2014), distance to teammates (Gonçalves et al., 2014), and their position in relation to the ball position (Gonçalves et al., 2019). For example, after losing the ball that led to a 3vs2+Gk defensive situation, the defending players may retreat to their own goal in an attempt to gain time that will allow more teammates to recover while also putting pressure on the player in possession in the penalty area to limit possible attempts to score. Under this example, players adjust their positioning according to local numerical relations (3vs2) and space (i.e., they retreat when close to the defensive half and press forward when close to their goal). Therefore, the players’ positioning on the pitch is a reflection of how each individual player explores the environmental information to support their actions (Gonçalves et al., 2016; Seifert et al., 2013; Travassos et al., 2012a). This evidence highlights that different functional behaviors emerge as a consequence of the players’ abilities to interact with the surrounding environment.

Perception and Action

The environment acts as a key role in the players’ decision since it contains informational properties that the players use to aid their decisions (Araújo et al., 2006; Fajen, 2007; Le Runigo et al., 2005; Travassos et al., 2012a). In this regard, player and team performances are based on the performer-environment relationship, in which the players support their actions according to the available information (Gibson, 1986). That is, opportunities to act (i.e., affordances) will emerge as the performers move and interact with the environmental information to support the emergence of goal-directed behaviors (Fajen, 2005; Fajen et al., 2009). For example, when two players are playing on the street, and suddenly, one kicks the ball and it stays trapped in a tree. To retrieve the ball, the players will explore the environment: If the tree is easy to climb, they may be able to retrieve it themselves; otherwise, they may search for other solutions, such as searching for a chair that might help them to increase their height or asking an adult to assist them. In this case, the adult opportunities for action would be different from those of the kids because, since the adult is likely taller, he may be able to retrieve the ball without needing to search for other materials to help increase his size. Under this scope, two different types of affordances can be considered: (1) body-scaled affordances, which refer to individual action capabilities, such as the ability of a defender to jump to cut the ball, and (2) action-scaled affordances, which relate to environmental properties, such as when the movement of a teammate opens space (i.e., the diagonal movement of a forward that attracts the opposing defender to move with him) for the player in possession to explore (Fajen et al., 2009). In general, the players’ ability to act (e.g., power, physical skills, motivation, tactical awareness, and individual constraints) and the environmental information (e.g., movement of teammates and opponents) will guide players’ movement behaviors. For example, when performing a dribble, the player in possession analyzes the defender’s body orientation and the available space to decide how to successfully dribble around the opponent. The player retrieves information, such as the perceived distance to the nearest defender, by reading his body orientation to provoke misalignments (Duarte et al., 2012) and identifies the available space based on the distance from the other defenders to the goal and to the pitch boundaries (Coutinho et al., 2020). However, because of the dynamic nature of soccer, the opportunities for action appear and disappear continuously based on the spatial-temporal interactions that emerge between the teammates and direct opponents (Le Runigo et al., 2005; Passos et al., 2016; Travassos et al., 2012a). Using the previous example, if the player in possession holds the ball for a long time without exploring different changes in speed and direction, it may be possible that the distance to the nearest defender decreases in such a way that would not allow the player to overcome the defender in the available space. As these examples show, players couple their actions, both in space and time, with the information, allowing them to decide when and how to perform (Le Runigo et al., 2005). Therefore, players’ movement behaviors in the pitch will depend upon their ability to exploit, identify, and use the relevant information in the competitive environment (Araújo et al., 2006; Fajen et al., 2009). Taking these findings into consideration, players must be challenged to refine their perceptual-action systems by exposing them to training tasks that help to develop their understanding of which actions are possible according to the environment and each individual’s action capabilities (Fajen, 2007).

Constraints Shape Players’ Decisions

The constraints-led approach consists of a theoretical approach underpinned in dynamical systems, ecological psychology, and non-linear pedagogy that characterize players as open systems, which implies a mutual relationship between the performer and the surrounding environment (Renshaw et al., 2019). As exemplified earlier, players will interact with the environment to solve their problems (e.g., retrieve the ball from the tree). Constraints create boundary conditions that shape and guide the players’ movement behaviors. According to Newell (1986a), the constraints can be classified according to three types: (1) environmental constraints, which concern the physical and social proprieties of the surrounding environment, such as the weather, light conditions, altitude (physical-related factors), and even the support from the group of peers and cultural expectations (social factors); (2) individual constraints, which reflect the performer’s individual characteristics, such as motivation, cognitive skills, and height; and (3) task constraints, which relate to manipulations in the task, such as the pitch size, number of players, game rules, or type of materials included. For example, the way a team presses the opposing team’s goal kick will depend on the match status (e.g., if the team is losing, it is more likely to press [task constraint]), the individual players’ ability to press (e.g., motivation, level of endurance [individual constraints]), or even the type of weather (e.g., during windy conditions, the last line is more likely to stay closer to their goal as a result of the no offside rule during the goal kick [environmental constraints]).

These constraints all provide information about the performers,...