Evaluation of ball passing and space detection skill in soccer: implementation of two new soccer tests

Soccer's AI transformation: deep learning's analysis of soccer's pandemic research evolution

Introduction

This paper aims to identify and compare changes in trends and research interests in soccer articles from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

We compared research interests and trends in soccer-related journal articles published before COVID-19 (2018-2020) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2021-2022) using Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) topic modeling.

Results

In both periods, we categorized the social sciences into psychology, sociology, business, and technology, with some interdisciplinary research topics identified, and we identified changes during the COVID-19 pandemic period, including a new approach to home advantage. Furthermore, Sports science and sports medicine had a vast array of subject areas and topics, but some similar themes emerged in both periods and found changes before and during COVID-19. These changes can be broadly categorized into (a) Social Sciences and Technology; (b) Performance training approaches; (c) injury part of body. With training topics being more prominent than match performance during the pandemic; and changes within injuries, with the lower limbs becoming more prominent than the head during the pandemic.

Conclusion

Now that the pandemic has ended, soccer environments and routines have returned to pre-pandemic levels, but the environment that have changed during the pandemic provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners in the field of soccer to detect post-pandemic changes and identify trends and future directions for research.

Does aerobic performance define match running performance among professional soccer players? A position-specific analysis

Aerobic performance is considered an important determinant of match running performance in soccer, but studies have rarely investigated this issue in top-level players. This study examined the possible associations between direct measures of aerobic performance and match running performance in elite soccer players. Aerobic performance was tested at the beginning of the season in laboratory settings. The match-running performance was measured by a global positioning system over a competitive half-season for a total of 82 match performances in professional players from Croatia (age: 23.76 ± 2.64; body height: 181.62 ± 7.09 cm; body mass: 77.01 ± 6.34 kg) and clustered as central player (n = 57) and side player (n = 25) performance. No significant differences in aerobic performance were noted between central and side players. The anaerobic threshold was correlated with high-speed running (19.8-25.1 km/h), sprint running (>25.1 km/h), and high-intensity running (>19.8 km/h) among side players (r = 0.52, 0.53, and 0.59, respectively; p < 0.01). For central players, the aerobic threshold was correlated with the total distance covered, low-intensity running (<14.3 km/h), and distance covered in the zone of running (14.4-19.7 km/h) (r = 0.47, 0.49, and 0.39; p < 0.01, 0.01, and 0.03, respectively). Conditioning for central players should include activities with intensities corresponding to aerobic thresholds, while conditioning of side players should be focused on the development of anaerobic thresholds.