Expertise Classification of Soccer Goalkeepers in Highly Dynamic Decision Tasks: A Deep Learning Approach for Temporal and Spatial Feature Recognition of Fixation Image Patch Sequences

Data Analysis of Psychological Approaches to Soccer Research: Using LDA Topic Modeling

This study identifies the topical areas of research that have attempted a psychological approach to soccer research over the last 33 years (1990-2022) and explored the growth and stagnation of the topic as well as research contributions to soccer development. Data were obtained from 1863 papers from the Web of Science database. The data were collected through keyword text mining and data preprocessing to determine the keywords needed for analysis. Based on the keywords, latent Dirichlet allocation-based topic modeling analysis was performed to analyze the topic distribution of papers and explore research trends by topic area. The topic modeling process included four topic area and fifty topics. The "Coaching Essentials in Football" topic area had the highest frequency, but it was not statistically identified as a trend. However, coaching, including training, is expected to continue to be an important research topic, as it is a key requirement for success in the highly competitive elite football world. Interest in the research field of "Psychological Skills for Performance Development" has waned in recent years. This may be due to the predominance of other subject areas rather than a lack of interest. Various high-tech interventions and problem-solving attempts are being made in this field, providing opportunities for qualitative and quantitative expansion. "Motivation, cognition, and emotion" is a largely underrated subject area in soccer psychology. This could be because survey-based psychological evaluation attempts have decreased as the importance of rapid field application has been emphasized in recent soccer-related studies. However, measuring psychological factors contributes to the study of football psychology through a new methodology and theoretical background. Recognizing the important role of psychological factors in player performance and mental management, as well as presenting new research directions and approaches that can be directly applied to the field, will advance soccer psychology research.

Do you have a good all-around view? Evaluation of a decision-making skills diagnostic tool using 360° videos and head-mounted displays in elite youth soccer

Elite youth players' decision-making skills are considered important predictors of adult performance in soccer. The presentation of 360° videos in head-mounted displays offers new potential for the diagnostic of these skills in talent development programs. This study evaluated a new diagnostic tool using soccer-specific 360° videos for assessing decision-making skills in youth academy (YA) players. The evaluation consisted of players' subjective feedback as well as the analysis of diagnostic and prognostic validity. It was hypothesized that high-level YA players achieve better diagnostic results than regional-level players, and U19 outperform U17 players. Moreover, YA players' diagnostic results should be positively associated with future adult performance level. During the 2018/19 season, N = 48 youth players participated in the diagnostic procedures (split-half reliability r = .78). Participants were shown 54 videos which terminated when the central midfielder received a teammate's pass. Participants were then asked how to best continue playing. The subjective evaluation explored YA players' experiences with the diagnostic tool via quantitative ratings (e.g., "How exciting was the task?", "How involved did you feel in the game situation?") and additional interviews. Diagnostic validity was examined in a balanced cross-sectional 2 × 2-design (performance level x age group) and prognostic validity in a 3-year prospective design. Sensitivity and case-by-case analyses completed the evaluation. The YA players provided positive quantitative ratings regarding their experienced immersion into the environment. Players' qualitative feedback indicated general acceptance of the diagnostic tool as well as it offered recommendations for improvements. Confirming the diagnostic validity, ANOVA revealed significant main effects for performance level (p < .001, η² = .29) and age group (p < .01, η² = .14). Contributing to the prognostic validity, the diagnostic results discriminated between YA players achieving a higher and a lower adult performance level ("League 1-4" vs. "League 5 or below") in adulthood (p < .05; d = 0.80). A ROC curve and the AUC showed that the correct assignment to the adult performance levels is possible with a 71% probability. YA players with a high decision-making accuracy had a six times higher chance of playing in "League 1-4". The results demonstrated empirical evidence for the new diagnostic tool in terms of YA players' acceptance and validity coefficients exceeding effect sizes of former studies. The technology provides opportunities to test soccer-specific situations demanding an all-around view that were not testable in former experimental settings. Further technological advancements will enable the realization of improvements recommended by the players. Nonetheless, case-by-case analyses suggest caution in using such a diagnostic as a selection tool in talent development programs.

Application of virtual simulation technology in sports decision training: a systematic review

Introduction

Sports decision-making is a complex process and plays a decisive role in sports performance. Virtual simulation technology is one of the popular sports decision making training tools. The application of virtual reality technology in sports decision making training has received widespread attention. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the scientific evidence of the application of virtual simulation technology in sports decision-making training, and summarize its application advantages and limitations.

Methods

The research literature databases of Web of science, PubMed, SCOPUS and Medline were searched, and the results were screened to determine the application of virtual reality technology in motion decision-making. We identified 10 articles and coded them to record the research design, research object characteristics, VR task setting, experimental intervention and research results.

Results

Through the review, it is found that virtual simulation technology has important value for sports decision-making training. In sports practice, virtual simulation technology can simulate sports decision-making tasks, measure and analyze athletes' sports decision-making performance. We still need to design a more scientific virtual simulation environment for sports decision-making. In this environment, we can better use virtual simulation technology to improve sports decision-making ability.

Application of Distributed Probability Model in Sports Based on Deep Learning: Deep Belief Network (DL-DBN) Algorithm for Human Behaviour Analysis

With the increased development of information technology, almost all the sectors have been developed. Age, educational qualifications, gender, and other factors have no bearing on acquiring knowledge in information technology.Most humans use mobile phones and other gadgets to make their lives easier. Machine Learning techniques are used to analyse the given data and aid in the classification or prediction of the dataset depending on the problem statement. It is significant to determine human behaviour analysis in the context of sports. In this research, the Deep Learning-Deep Belief Network (DL-DBN) algorithm is implemented with probability to analyse human behaviour in sports and implement a distributed probability model for classifying the behavior. The classification results have shown that the accuracy for strength training is both the maximum and the smallest, reaching 99% and 71%, respectively.