The advent of new technologies and the interest of media in enhanced reports have advanced football to the most analysed sports in Europe. This development was accompanied by the hope for improvements in football practice as well as competition analysis. Meanwhile, some critical opinions gave rise to a `practical impact debate` with controversial positions. A basic reason for the failure of performance analysis research to provide hints for practical improvement is the applied research strategy. There are fundamental differences between the applied basic research and applied research, that would in fact be needed to generate practical impact. Some basic requirements for a practice oriented research program in performance analysis are: • Adaptation of qualitative methods to arrive at sound interpretations of player behaviour. • Integration of background information (tactics, preparation, opponent, situation) for assessing the quality of actions. • Interpretation of results from basic research only as background information for practical analyses. • Development of a new generation of game analyses that make use of the new data available and aim at assessing constructs on a higher tactical or physiological level oriented at the information needs of practice. • Investigation of football from the aspect of emergency and contingency for a better understanding of its nature.
© Copyright 2016 21st Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science (ECSS), Vienna, 6. -9. July 2016. Published by University of Vienna. All rights reserved.