The influence of relative playing area and player numerical imbalance on physical and perceptual demands in soccer small-sided game formats.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to examine physiological, mechanical and perceptual loading in small-sided games using different relative playing areas with balanced and unbalanced player numbers. METHODS: Data were collected in twelve elite youth male soccer players and included heart rate and standard time-motion outputs using commercial GPS. RESULTS: The data demonstrated higher cardiovascular, physical and perceptual demands with increasing pitch size (e.g. average HR was 88.7 vs. 86.7% HRmax with 8 vs. 2 high-intensity acceleration in medium vs. small pitch formats. The largest pitch format resulted in a greater accumulation of high-intensity distance (47 ± 30 m), higher peak velocity (25.2 ± 1.6 km.h-1) and a higher distance and frequency of accelerations (35 ± 9 m and 8 ± 3) compared with the smallest pitch (all p < 0.01). In unbalanced games, there was significantly greater average heart rate in the overloaded team (84.4 ± 4.9 vs. 80.4 ± 4.8% HRmax in 4 v. 6). CONCLUSION: These data suggest that different game formats including numerical imbalance could be prescribed for squad management to target conditioning stimuli for specific players (e.g. to target a higher training load for players that do not get consistent match exposure).

Facilitating national football teams return to training and competition during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives: Provide a robust framework to provide a safe environment for return to training and competition of the US national soccer teams following domestic and international travel. Methods: US Soccer COVID-19 working group created a return to play manual for its national teams, prescribing discrete phases to return to training and competition. This was underpinned by strict health and safety and travel protocols for specific venues and persons. This was complemented by an aggressive testing cadence and isolation policies for delegations (players, internal and external support staff). Between September 2020 and April 2021, there were nine events for males and females at the youth, senior and Paralympic level, with international opponents hosted domestically. Results: In total, 6590 point of care (POC) (n=1810) and PCR (n=4780) tests combined were run. Overall positivity rate for players and staff in male events of 0.10% (n=2) and 0.00% (n=0) for females were recorded. Staff positivity rate was 0.14% overall, and external vendors 0.10%. Total POC and PCR positives in male events (n=2) occurred either the day of arrival or the following day. Conclusion: The implementation of strictly adhered to protocols and testing cadences yielded low positivity rates within team delegations. By comparison, initial league-wide COVID-19 testing in mid-2020 in other sports reported league-wide positivity rates of 2.9% (National Football League), 2.7% (Major League Soccer) and 5.3% (National Basketball Association). The English Premier League reported an increase in positivity rate in early 2021 from 1.22% to 1.74%.With the implementation of regimented protocols and stringent testing, it is possible to hold elite-level international sporting competitions involving long-haul travel while ensuring continued safety during a global pandemic.

The PATRIC Bioinformatics Resource Center: expanding data and analysis capabilities.

The PathoSystems Resource Integration Center (PATRIC) is the bacterial Bioinformatics Resource Center funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (https://www.patricbrc.org). PATRIC supports bioinformatic analyses of all bacteria with a special emphasis on pathogens, offering a rich comparative analysis environment that provides users with access to over 250 000 uniformly annotated and publicly available genomes with curated metadata. PATRIC offers web-based visualization and comparative analysis tools, a private workspace in which users can analyze their own data in the context of the public collections, services that streamline complex bioinformatic workflows and command-line tools for bulk data analysis. Over the past several years, as genomic and other omics-related experiments have become more cost-effective and widespread, we have observed considerable growth in the usage of and demand for easy-to-use, publicly available bioinformatic tools and services. Here we report the recent updates to the PATRIC resource, including new web-based comparative analysis tools, eight new services and the release of a command-line interface to access, query and analyze data.