Measuring skill via player dynamics in football dribbling.

Although a myriad of studies have been conducted on player behavior in football, in-depth studies with structured theory are rare due to the difficulty in quantifying individual player skills and team strategies. We propose a physics-based mathematical model that describes football players' movements during dribbling situations, parameterized by the attacker aggressiveness, the defender hesitance and the top speed of both players. These player- and situation-specific parameters are extracted by fitting the model to real player trajectories from Major League Soccer games, and enable the quantification of player dribbling attributes and decisions beyond classical statistics. We show that the model captures the essential dribbling dynamics, and analyze how differences between parameters in varying game situations provide valuable insights into players' behavior. Lastly, we quantitatively study how changes in the player's parameters impact dribbling performance, enabling the model to provide scientific guidance to player training, scouting and game strategy development.

Football, Culture, Skill Development and Sport Coaching: Extending Ecological Approaches in Athlete Development Using the Skilled Intentionality Framework.

In this manuscript, we extend ecological approaches and suggest ideas for enhancing athlete development by utilizing the Skilled Intentionality Framework. A broad aim is to illustrate the extent to which social, cultural and historical aspects of life are embodied in the way football is played and the skills young footballers develop during learning. Here, we contend that certain aspects of the world (i.e., environmental properties) are "weighted" with social and cultural significance, "standing out" to be more readily perceived and simultaneously acted upon when playing football. To comprehend how patterns of team coordination and athletic skill embody aspects of culture and context we outline the value-directedness of player-environment intentionality. We demonstrate that the values an individual can express are constrained by the character of the social institutions (i.e., football clubs) and the social order (i.e., form of life) in which people live. In particular, we illuminate the extent to which value-directedness can act as a constraint on the skill development of football players "for good or ill." We achieve this goal by outlining key ecological and relational concepts that help illustrate the extent to which affordances are value-realizing and intentionality is value-directed (exemplified, by footballers performing in a rondo). To enhance coaching practice, we offer: (a) insights into markers of skilled intentionality, and (b), the language of skilled intentions, as well as highlighting (c), an additional principle of Non-linear Pedagogy: Shaping skilled intentions, or more precisely shaping the value-directedness of player-environment intentionality. We contend that, if sport practitioners do not skilfully attend to sociocultural constraints and shape the intentions of players within training environments and games, the social, cultural, and historic constraints of their environment will do so: constantly soliciting some affordances over others and directing skill development.

Developing Creativity to Enhance Human Potential in Sport: A Wicked Transdisciplinary Challenge.

The challenge of developing creativity to enhance human potential is conceptualized as a multifaceted wicked problem due to the countless interactions between people and environments that constitute human development, athletic skill, and creative moments. To better comprehend the inter-relatedness of ecologies and human behaviors, there have been increasing calls for transdisciplinary approaches and holistic ecological models. In this paper we explore an ecological dynamics rationale for creativity, highlighting the conceptual adjacency of key concepts from transdisciplinarity, dynamic systems theory, ecological psychology and social-cognitive psychology. Our aim is to extend the scope of ecological dynamics and contextualize the application of non-linear pedagogy in sport. Foregrounding the role of sociocultural constraints on creative behaviors, we characterize the athlete-environment system as an ecological niche that arises from, and simultaneously co-creates, a form of life. We elaborate the notion that creative moments, skill and more generally talent in sport, are not traits possessed by individuals alone, but rather can be conceived as properties of the athlete-environment system shaped by changing constraints. This re-conceptualization supports a pedagogical approach predicated on notions of athletes and sports teams as complex adaptive systems. In such systems, continuous non-linear interactions between system components support the exploration of fluent and flexibly creative performance solutions by athletes and sports teams. The implications for practice suggest that cultivating a constellation of constraints can facilitate adaptive exploration of novel affordances (opportunities/invitation for action), fostering creative moments and supporting creative development in athletes. Future models or frameworks for practice contend that pedagogies should emerge from, and evolve in, interaction with the sociocultural context in which practitioners and athletes are embedded.

A cluster phase analysis for collective behavior in team sports.

Collective behavior can be defined as the ability of humans to coordinate with others through a complex environment. Sports offer exquisite examples of this dynamic interplay, requiring decision making and other perceptual-cognitive skills to adjust individual decisions to the team self-organization and vice versa. Considering players of a team as periodic phase oscillators, synchrony analyses can be used to model the coordination of a team. Nonetheless, a main limitation of current models is that collective behavior is context independent. In other words, players on a team can be highly synchronized without this corresponding to a meaningful coordination dynamics relevant to the context of the game. Considering these issues, the aim of this study was to develop a method of analysis sensitive to the context for evidence-based measures of collective behavior.