RESEARCH ARTICLE


Analysis of Tactical Performance of Youth Soccer Players



I. Costa1, 3, *, J. Garganta3, 4, P. Greco2, I. Mesquita3, 4, B. Silva3, E. Muller3, D. Castelao3, A. Rebelo3, 4, A. Seabra3, 4
1 University Center of Belo Horizonte, UNI-BH, Belo Horizonte, MG-Brazil
2 Federal University of Minas Gerais, UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG-Brazil
3 Faculty of Sport, University of Porto, FADEUP, Porto, Portugal
4 Centre of Research, Education, Innovation and Intervention in Sport, CIFI2D, FADEUP, Porto, Portugal

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2010
Volume: 3
First Page: 70
Last Page: 72
Publisher ID: TOSSJ-3-70
DOI: 10.2174/1875399X010030100070

Article History:

Received Date: 05/07/2009
Revision Received Date: 06/10/2009
Acceptance Date: 01/11/2009
Electronic publication date: 29/4/2010
Collection year: 2010

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Creative Commons License
© 2010 Costa et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Centro de Estudos em Cognição e Ação (CECA), Escola de Educação Física, Fisioterapia eTerapia Ocupacional da UFMG, Av. Presidente Antônio Carlos, 6627–Pampulha, Belo Horizonte – Minas Gerais - Brazil; Cep: 31.310-250; Tel/Fax: 0XX (31) 3499-2325; E-mail: israelteoldocosta@googlemail.com


Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze tactical performance of youth soccer players concerning different age groups, according to the tactical game principles and action's place and outcome. The sample comprised 106 youth players who performed 2915 defensive and 2662 offensive tactical actions. The normal distribution of the data was verified by the test of Kolmogorov-Smirnov (p≤0.05). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the values of the performance indexes, concerning tactical actions. The results show significant statistical differences for all tactical performance indexes (p≤0.05) Also, it confirms that most of youth teams had better performance indexes for the “depth mobility” and “defensive coverage” principles. It is possible to conclude that the lowest offensive performance index concerns to “width and length” principle, for all youth age groups. In addition, the lowest defensive performance index, concerning “concentration”, “defensive unity” and “delay” principles, showed a dependence of the age group in order these principles. It is also reasonable to conclude that youth players showed higher difficulties to be efficient in defensive tactical actions in the offensive midfield.

Keywords: Soccer, tactical performance, youth teams, game principles.