Morphology of possible regions in elite soccer players

ABSTRACT

The popularity of spatio-temporal analyses in soccer is increasing. As many of these analyses depend on the regions a player can occupy in a certain amount of time (the possible regions), the understanding of this concepts is important for analyses to produce usable results. This study investigated how possible regions of soccer morph with varying times and running speeds. Twenty-four players from the Danish Superliga participated, and 13 players were analysed. The possible regions were analysed with times from 0.5 to 4 s (0.5 s increments) and initial velocities from 1 to 7 m/s (1 m/s increments). In this study, we showed that the possible regions can be described by ellipses (eccentricity of 0.5348 ± 0.1912). When comparing the possible region ellipses at every time and velocity pair, 1.95 % of the ellipses were not significantly different from the others. In conclusion, possible regions are unique in shape and size depending on player running speed and time available. However, as only few strikers participated, the results for this group should be interpreted with caution. Coaches can predict possible regions based on these parameters increasing precision of post-game analyses.

KEYWORDS:

• Spatio-temporal analysis
• athlete profiling
• possible regions
• soccer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).