This ground-breaking handbook takes an in-depth look at soccer match analysis, highlighting the latest in match analysis research and the innovative technologies now used by professional soccer clubs around the world.

Appealing to a wide audience, this ground-breaking handbook takes an in-depth look at soccer match analysis, highlighting the latest in match analysis research and the innovative technologies now being used by professional soccer clubs around the world. Bridging the gap between research, theory and practice, these methods can be used by coaches, sport scientists and fitness coaches to assess and improve: styles of play, technical ability and physical fitness objective performance feedback to players the development of specific training routines use of available notation software, video analysis and manual systems understanding of current academic research in soccer notational analysis. This is the first book to focus exclusively on football, and is based on the authors' extensive experience in academic and professional match analysis.

Sport performance analysis techniques help coaches, athletes and sport scientists develop an objective understanding of actual sport performance, as opposed to self-report, fitness tests or laboratory based experiments. For example, contemporary performance analysis enables elite sports people and coaches to obtain live feedback of match statistics and video sequences using flexible internet systems, systems that have become an indispensible tool for all those involved in high performance sport. The Routledge Handbook of Sports Performance Analysis is the most comprehensive guide to this exciting and dynamic branch of sport science ever to be published. The book explores performance analysis across the four main contexts in which it is commonly used: support for coaches and athletes; the media; judging sport contests, and academic research. It offers an up-to-date account of methodological advances in PA research, assesses the evidence underpinning contemporary theories of sport performance, and reviews developments in applied PA across a wide range of sports, from soccer to track and field athletics. Covering every important aspect of PA, including tactics, strategy, mechanical aspects of technique, physical aspects of performance such as work-rate, coach behaviour and referee behaviour, this is an essential reference for any serious student, researcher or practitioner working in sport performance analysis, sport coaching or high performance sport.

Match analysis is a performance-diagnostic procedure, which can be used to carry out systematic gaming analysis during competition and training. The analysis of team and racket sports, whether in competition, for opponent preparation (match plan), follow-up, or training is nowadays indispensable in many sports games at different levels. This analysis nevertheless presents many open questions and problem areas: Which data should be used? Who manages the data? Who provides whom with which information? How is this information presented, digested, and applied? The more complex and anonymous the data management is, the more commercial, expensive, and uncontrollable information management and provision becomes. Match Analysis: How to Use Data in Professional Sport is the first book to examine this topic through three types of data sets; video, event, and position data and show how to interpret this data and apply the findings for better team and individual sport performance. This innovative new volume is key reading for researchers, students, and practitioners alike in the fields of Coaching, Performance Analysis, Sport Management, and related specific sport disciplines.

This book offers a comprehensive overview on the methods and concepts of theoretical and practical performance analysis. Observational systems for action detection and tracking systems for position detection are introduced, starting from basic methodological principles. The issue of reliability testing is addressed for both methods, and examples of successful applications are provided. The distinction between theoretical and practical performance as essential conceptual achievement is explained in two separate chapters. Most recent theoretical models of game sports are presented, including the dynamical systems perspective, stochastic modelling, and contingency or chance as part of the game. The practical chapter introduces the concept of comprehensive performance analysis as appropriate background. It deals with qualitative methods used for assessing player and team performances, strategy development, and methods and principles of video tactic training for successful transfer of the results of analyses. The book will be of value to all with an interest in the dramatically increasing impact of performance analysis in game sports.

This book assesses association football’s history and development in Ireland from the late 1870s until the early twenty-first century. It focuses on four key themes—soccer’s early development before and after partition, the post-Emergency years, coaching and developing the game, and supporters and governance. In particular, it examines key topics such as the Troubles, Anglo-Irish football relations, the failure of a professional structure in the Republic and Northern Ireland, national and regional identity, relationships with other sports, class, economics and gender. It features contributions from some of today’s leading academic writers on the history of Irish soccer while the views of a number of pre-eminent sociologists and economists specialising in the game’s development are also offered. It identifies some of the difficulties faced by soccer’s players and administrators in Ireland and challenges the notion that it was a ‘garrison game’ spread mainly by the military and generally only played by those who were not fully committed to the nationalist cause. This is the first edited collection to focus solely on the progress of soccer in Ireland since its introduction and adds to the growing academic historiography of Irish sport and its relationship with politics, culture and society. The chapters in this book were originally published an a special issue in Soccer & Society.

This title surveys the full depth and breadth of contemporary coaching studies, mapping the existing disciplinary territory and opening up important new areas of research.