The Footbonaut as a new football-specific skills test: reproducibility and age-related differences in highly trained youth players

ABSTRACT

Purpose: In sport, assessments are routinely administered to give an indication of performance. Assessing a skill requires external factors to dictate how and when the action is performed, highlighting the need for skill assessments to closely replicate the perception-action couplings experienced in football game play. Therefore, this study investigated if the Footbonaut is a valid and reliable football-specific skill assessment tool. Methods: Footbonaut performance scores from 152 male players from U12 to U23 representing a professional German Bundesliga club during the 2016/2017 season were analysed. Results: Pearson correlations (r) and coefficient of variation (CV) for the correct number of passes in a target (CV = 7.5–11.1; r = 0.48; p < 0.001), the speed at which they completed each trial (CV = 2.6–5.1; r = 0.70; p < 0.001), and a computer-generated point score (CV = 7.4–12.3; r = 0.77; p < 0.001) demonstrated acceptable test–retest reliability. Moreover, a MANOVA revealed a strong multivariate effect of age group on speed and accuracy combined (F = 7.80, p < 0.001, ES = 0.28), demonstrating the Footbonaut’s construct validity. Conclusion: The results in this study demonstrated that the Footbonaut is a valid and reliable assessment of football-specific skill.

KEYWORDS:

• Passing
• perceptual-cognitive skill
• reliability
• validity
• representative design

Practical Implications

The Footbonaut is a tool with the potential to open new avenues for using representative research designs that can further understanding of the reciprocal nature of the perception-action coupling in football. The findings of this study are valuable for practitioners who want to design representative tasks, as the Footbonaut can be replicated in the field by coupling passing actions with decision making and measuring speed and accuracy.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the staff and students who have helped with data collection. Adam Beavan is supported by ‘Science and Health in Football’ scholarship funded by the German Football Association.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.