0000000000740685
AUTHOR
Pedro Passos
An ecological dynamics rationale to explain home advantage in professional football
Despite clear findings, research on home advantage in team sports lacks a comprehensive theoretical rationale for understanding why this phenomenon is so compelling. The aim of this study was to provide an explanatory theoretical rationale in ecological dynamics for the influence of home advantage observed in research on professional football. We recorded 30 competitive matches and analyzed 13958 passes, from one highly successful team in the Portuguese Premier League, during season 2010/2011. Performance data were analyzed using the Match Analysis Software—Amisco[Formula: see text] (version 3.3.7.25), allowing us to characterize team activity profiles. Results were interpreted from an ecol…
The micro-macro link in understanding sport tactical behaviours: Integrating information and action at different levels of system analysis in sport
The micro-macro link is a central issue of human movement sciences because it directly refers to coordination and scalability of movement behaviour at different levels of analysis in a complex system. This feature of complexity is a key feature to consider decisions and actions as transitional behaviours at different levels during performance. Transitions expressed through bifurcations are an important part of a universal decisionmaking process. Here we explain how individuals perform decision-making behaviours in a minimal social performance unit ( competing dyads), and how these two levels are linked in a sports team. Finally we discuss some applications of the micro-macro links for the d…
The micro-macro link in understanding sport tactical behaviours: Integrating information and action at different levels of system analysis in sport
Les liens micro-macroscopiques sont centraux dans les sciences du mouvement humain dans la mesure ou ils correspondent aux coordinations et aux echelonnages des comportements moteurs a differents niveaux d’analyse des systemes complexes. Cet aspect de la complexite est un point cle permettant de considerer decision et action comme un comportement de transition a differents niveaux lors de la realisation d’une performance. Les transitions exprimees en termes de bifurcations sont une part importante du mecanisme universel de decision. Les transitions de phase fournissent aussi un moyen de comprendre les liens micro-macro. Dans cet article de synthese, nous developpons un point de vue qui expl…
Varying numbers of players in small-sided soccer games modifies action opportunities during training
This study examined the effects of the numbers of players involved in small-sided team games (underloading and overloading) on opportunities for maintaining ball possession, shooting at goal and passing to teammates during training. These practice constraint manipulations were assumed to alter values of key performance variables identified in previous research, such as interpersonal distances between players and time to intercept shots and passes. Fifteen male soccer players (age: 19.60±1.99 years) were grouped into three teams and played against each other in different versions of small-sided soccer games, in which the number of players was manipulated in three different conditions: 5 vs. …