0000000000540148
AUTHOR
Júlio Garganta
Sports teams as complex adaptive systems: manipulating player numbers shapes behaviours during football small-sided games
Small-sided and conditioned games (SSCGs) in sport have been modelled as complex adaptive systems. Research has shown that the relative space per player (RSP) formulated in SSCGs can impact on emergent tactical behaviours. In this study we adopted a systems orientation to analyse how different RSP values, obtained through manipulations of player numbers, influenced four measures of interpersonal coordination observed during performance in SSCGs. For this purpose we calculated positional data (GPS 15 Hz) from ten U-15 football players performing in three SSCGs varying in player numbers (3v3, 4v4 and 5v5). Key measures of SSCG system behaviours included values of (1) players’ dispersion, (2) …
Numerical relations and skill level constrain co-adaptive behaviors of agents in sports teams.
Similar to other complex systems in nature (e.g., a hunting pack, flocks of birds), sports teams have been modeled as social neurobiological systems in which interpersonal coordination tendencies of agents underpin team swarming behaviors. Swarming is seen as the result of agent co-adaptation to ecological constraints of performance environments by collectively perceiving specific possibilities for action (affordances for self and shared affordances). A major principle of invasion team sports assumed to promote effective performance is to outnumber the opposition (creation of numerical overloads) during different performance phases (attack and defense) in spatial regions adjacent to the bal…