title: Practice effects on intra-team synergies in football teams.
abstract: Developing synchronised player movements for fluent competitive match play is a common goal for coaches of team games. An ecological dynamics approach advocates that intra-team synchronization is governed by locally created information, which specifies shared affordances responsible for synergy formation. To verify this claim we evaluated coordination tendencies in two newly-formed teams of recreational players during association football practice games, weekly, for fifteen weeks (thirteen matches). We investigated practice effects on two central features of synergies in sports teams - dimensional compression and reciprocal compensation here captured through near in-phase modes of coordination and time delays between coupled players during forward and backwards movements on field while attacking and defending. Results verified that synergies were formed and dissolved rapidly as a result of the dynamic creation of informational properties, perceived as shared affordances among performers. Practising once a week led to small improvements in the readjustment delays between co-positioning team members, enabling faster regulation of coordinated team actions. Mean values of the number of player and team synergies displayed only limited improvements, possibly due to the timescales of practice. No relationship between improvements in dimensional compression and reciprocal compensation were found for number of shots, amount of ball possession and number of ball recoveries made. Findings open up new perspectives for monitoring team coordination processes in sport.
authors.affiliation: FC Zenit, St. Petersburg, Russia; CIFI(2)D - Centre for Research, Education, Innovation and Intervention in Sport, Faculdade de Desporto, Universidade do Porto, Portugal. Electronic address: psilv@icloud.com.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Silva
authors.affiliation: FC Zenit, St. Petersburg, Russia.
authors.forename: Dante
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chung
authors.affiliation: FC Zenit, St. Petersburg, Russia.
authors.forename: Thiago
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Carvalho
authors.affiliation: FC Zenit, St. Petersburg, Russia.
authors.forename: Tiago
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Cardoso
authors.affiliation: Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University, UK; FiDiPro Programme, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Davids
authors.affiliation: CIPER, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Universidade de Lisboa, Cruz Quebrada Dafundo, Portugal.
authors.forename: Duarte
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Araújo
authors.affiliation: FC Zenit, St. Petersburg, Russia.
authors.forename: Júlio
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Garganta
mesh_terms: D054874:Athletic Performance / Q000523:psychology*; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D012916:Soccer / Q000523:psychology*; D012933:Social Identification; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Dimensional compression; Reciprocal compensation; Shared affordances; Team coordination