ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS + DEVELOPING COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR IN FOOTBALL PART 2/3

                                     

Here is the 2nd part of what could be the most important coaching document a local/amateur coach could read all year, even though we're only 9 days in!

It comes from a monster document you can find here:

"The forest through the trees: Making sense of an ecological dynamics approach to measuring and developing collective behaviour in football" - William Sheehan, Rhys Tribolet, Mark Watsford, Job Fransen

There's a PDF link you can click on that page that will take you the full article - a mammoth 89 pages - that the authors have tried to make a reader friendly as possible for other sub-elite/elite coaches but being a local/amateur coach, I read it thought I could dumb it down even more for coaches shorter on time and resources.

It's documents like this that need to made available to all coaches, especially the ones at club level where coaching starts for EVERY player, and is why they have put this together and released it for free.

It is based on soccer but the Sydney Swans "were important in the conceptualisation of the work, as well as the testing of some of the ways we approached explaining the heavy jargon to a more general audience" as Tweeted to me from one of the authors Job Fransen, who has done plenty of work in the AFL space in the past.

I have used plenty of AFL language in my notes but it'll be handy to keep the soccer reference in mind as some bits might not connect perfectly to AFL.

This is part 2 of a 3-parter so strap yourself in and let me know anything you need help/clarification on.

COORDINATIVE BEHAVIOR IN FOOTBALL

• Variables for measuring tactical behavior include effective area (a – full ground team analysis), length/width (b – team defensive analysis), centroid (c – stoppage/contest analysis) and stretch reflex (d – inside/outside players at contest)

• Voronoi diagrams shows the dominant region of these 6 players

• Greater inter–team synchrony is demonstrated in the first half of games due to changes in specific performance constraints such as fatigue or other strategic (team formation) or situational changes (change in score line)
• Voronoi diagrams have the ability to account for every player and their spatial relationships with each other especially when analysing defense as the more you can compress the less space the opposition can use when in possession but it can also show the space you are able to provide when you are in possession
• Mesoscpoic/Intra–Team parameters are often measured in isolation but still offer additional insight, especially when analysed with reference to successful and unsuccessful phases of play via patterns of behavior and decision–making afforded and governed by information in the performer–environment sub–system
• There is an increase in team dispersion (effective area) when in possession of the ball and decreased dispersion when out of possession and without possession
• With diminished physical capacities in the 2^nd half of games, the ability to explore the enter field while trying to unbalance an opposing team is compromised while player speed at which they can compress/disperse the speed also decrease
• Positional centroids appear to guide emergent, position–specific behavior especially within team defense formations where smaller distances between players allow for greater inter-player coordination
• Defender and midfielders spend more time in synchrony with each other with forwards individually trying to be creative and less predictable/degenerate to destabilise the opposition and open up scoring opportunities
• Microscopic/Inter–Player refer to how interpersonal coordination tendencies constrain decision–making, performance, and inter–player patterns and allows coaches to identify emergent patterns of coordination and behavior that precede successful phases of play that can guide task design for training
• Dyads/Player Units consisting of backs attain superior and higher regular levels of synchronisation, as opposed to dyads of forwards, who are generally further apart and dyads engaged in offensive game play spend far less time in synchrony
• Defenders use the positioning of fellow defenders, and the displacement of the ball, as key informational variables that guide decision–making, constrain behavior or provide affordances for action
• Dyads between forwards and backs have weak in–phase patterns of coordination

PATTERNS FOR PERFORMANCE

• Inter–Team x winning teams demonstrate greater regularity in defensive numerical dominance while also maintaining a greater separation between their own centroid and that of the opposing team which decreases pressure on the defensive team and allows more time to modify behaviors relative to that of the attacking team and minimising of the number of affordances available to the offense
• Zone defensive strategies leads to superior distance and variability between centroids via a shared focus on teammate positioning and ball placement information compared to man–to–man defense which can constraint players as they also need to perceive and act in accordance with their opposing player
• In attack, teams utilising direct play counter–attacks are more effective than elaborate possession play attacks when playing against an outnumbered defense with 94% of goals being scored against an imbalanced defense while only 2.5% were scored against a balanced defense
• Smaller stretch index/congestion values in defense relative to larger values in attack/dispersion are associated with more successful attacks
• Teams need to increase team dispersion, relative to the defense to generate goal–scoring affordances as effective area, surface area, length/width and dominant regions increase when teams regain possession and transition to offense
• Destabilising opponent inter-team stability by creating width but still maintaining centroids and improves your odds of developing scoring opportunities
• Increased variability between attacking and defensive centroids and a continual increase in this variability up until the critical moment/goal attempt is a vital part of creating scoring opportunities
• When the defense attempts to guard more area with a greater spread of players they were required to defend more shots on goals but when better compressed they successfully performed more tackles
• If attacking teams can cooperatively dominate greater field regions, then they will be afforded more favorable passing opportunities for teammates and create more scoring opportunities too
• Stronger teams use greater offensive length, width and surface area in an attempt to move forward into the scoring zones and create scoring opportunities
• Opposition, and in particular weaker, teams will try and counter this by defending over greater length, width and surface area which as mentioned above opens up more passing options that lead to scoring opportunities
• Winning teams demonstrate superior values of synchrony over a match compared to losing teams, especially defensively
• At the moment of inter-player pass initiation, the interpersonal distances between defenders, attackers, and ball trajectory act as an informational variable that constrains the decision–making process and reveals possibilities for successful passing or interception
• When the distance between the ball carrier and defender decreases, the distance between the ball carrier and surrounding teammates also decreases as teammates approach the ball carrier to afford a passing opportunity to maintaining possession but support players should continue to focus on maintaining distance between themselves and the nearest defenders
• Defenders should remain in line with the ball, the goal and their direct opponent as this positioning increases the chance of interception via having more time to anticipate the attacker’s actions while guarding the direct line to goal
• Attacking players should explore the positional misalignment of the defenders in relation to the goal to gain favorable goal–scoring affordances and supporting teammates should continuously move to create passing angles as far away from the closest defender as possible
• There is a decrease in interpersonal distances from the moment at which a ball carrier passes to a teammate and then to the proceeding moment of a pass initiation by that individual to a fellow player and there is greater variability in these measures when a ball carrier opts to run and carry rather then pass by hand or foot
• Winning teams demonstrate well–connected passing networks where each player has nearly the same connectivity v team’s where only certain players connect the team
• For defensive success, aim to attain collective positioning of your team’s centroid between that of the opposition and the their goal while remaining in synch
• For attacking success, players should move unpredictably in an attempt to misalign their opposing defender to develop passing/scoring opportunities