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Capturing complex, non-linear team behaviours during competitive football performance

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Abstract

This study investigated changes in the complexity (magnitude and structure of variability) of the collective behaviours of association football teams during competitive performance. Raw positional data from an entire competitive match between two professional teams were obtained with the ProZone® tracking system. Five compound positional variables were used to investigate the collective patterns of performance of each team including: surface area, stretch index, team length, team width, and geometrical centre. Analyses involve the coefficient of variation (%CV) and approximate entropy (ApEn), as well as the linear association between both parameters. Collective measures successfully captured the idiosyncratic behaviours of each team and their variations across the six time periods of the match. Key events such as goals scored and game breaks (such as half time and full time) seemed to influence the collective patterns of performance. While ApEn values significantly decreased during each half, the %CV increased. Teams seem to become more regular and predictable, but with increased magnitudes of variation in their organisational shape over the natural course of a match.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Human Kinetics, Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ricardo Duarte & Duarte Araújo

  2. School of Science and Technology, University of Evora, Evora, Portugal

    Hugo Folgado

  3. Faculty of Human Kinetics, Technical University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Pedro Esteves

  4. Department of Performance Analysis, Manchester City FC, Manchester, UK

    Pedro Marques

  5. School of Human Movement Studies, Queensland University of Technologies, Brisbane, Australia

    Keith Davids

Authors
  1. Ricardo Duarte
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  2. Duarte Araújo
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  3. Hugo Folgado
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  4. Pedro Esteves
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  5. Pedro Marques
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  6. Keith Davids
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Duarte Araújo.

Additional information

The first author was supported by a grant of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/43994/2008). The authors are grateful to Prozone (Prozone®, ProZone Holdings Ltd, UK) for their help providing the data sets and encouraging the development of the study.

This paper was recommended for publication by Editors FENG Dexing and HAN Jing.

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Duarte, R., Araújo, D., Folgado, H. et al. Capturing complex, non-linear team behaviours during competitive football performance. J Syst Sci Complex 26, 62–72 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-013-2290-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-013-2290-3

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