Oscillations of centroid position and surface area of soccer teams in small-sided games

TLDR: It is concluded that over the course of a whole small-sided game, the forward-backward motion of the centroids is most strongly linearly related and therefore surface area and particularly centroid position may provide a sound basis for a collective variable that captures the dynamics of attacking and defending in soccer at team level.

Abstract: There is a need for a collective variable that captures the dynamics of team sports like soccer at match level. The centroid positions and surface areas of two soccer teams potentially describe the coordinated flow of attacking and defending in small-sided soccer games at team level. The aim of the present study was to identify an overall game pattern by establishing whether the proposed variables were linearly related between teams over the course of the game. In addition, we tried to identify patterns in the build-up of goals. A positive linear relation and a negative linear relation were hypothesized for the centroid positions and surface areas respectively. Finally, we hypothesized that deviations from these patterns are present in the build-up of goals. Ten young male elite soccer players (mean age 17.3, s=0.7) played three small-sided soccer games (4-a-side) of 8 minutes as part of their regular training routine. An innovative player tracking system, local position measurement (LPM), was us...