Not the things people argue about. Trewin and colleagues reviewed twenty-eight studies of tracking data and found only trivial changes in with possession, formation, or whether a team was winning or losing. Temperature and altitude were a different matter. Heat from as little as twenty degrees Celsius cut by about 8.5 percent.
Very high-speed running fell further in the heat, by around 15 percent. Altitude lowered the number of high-speed efforts players completed, across a wide range from about 7.1 to 25 percent. The authors conclude that environmental factors have a strong influence on why running output varies from match to match, which is a problem for anyone reading those numbers as a measure of effort.
Tracking players is now routine. Semi-automatic multiple camera systems and technologies are used worldwide to quantify match-running, and the numbers feed into selection, substitution and training. Trewin and colleagues asked what else those numbers respond to, systematically reviewing the environmental and situational factors that affect match-running in soccer.
The search was wide and the filter was strict. Databases including PubMed, EBSCOHost and Web of Science produced one thousand eight hundred and six studies, and twenty-eight met the specific criteria. Further articles known to the authors were included as well.
The situational findings are the deflating ones. Possession, team formation and , meaning whether the team won, lost or drew, each produced only trivial changes in match-running. The tactical story that a team ran more because it was chasing a game does not show up clearly in the tracking data.
The environmental findings are large. Match-running was affected by temperatures as low as twenty degrees Celsius, with high-speed running decreasing about 8.5 percent and very high-speed running about 15 percent. Altitude lowered the number of high-speed efforts by somewhere between 7.1 and 25 percent. The authors conclude that environmental factors strongly influence the match-to-match variability in running performance, and that understanding them better would allow planning to limit the damage, particularly in relation to gender. One caution: that wide altitude range reflects studies using different systems and thresholds.
wat. The weather moves a player’s running statistics more than the score does.
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Clubs judge players on distance covered and sprint counts. If weather and altitude move those numbers by this much, comparing one match to another without accounting for conditions measures the stadium rather than the player.
How do we know?
A systematic search of PubMed, EBSCOHost and Web of Science produced one thousand eight hundred and six studies, of which twenty-eight met the criteria, all using camera systems or satellite tracking to quantify match-running.
What is still unknown
A review of twenty-eight studies using different tracking systems and different speed thresholds, which is why the altitude effect spans such a wide range. The authors note that understanding by gender in particular remains limited.
Learn something?
Where to next
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