The Differential Effect of the Evolving Game Status in the Passing

Sequences of Top-Level European Football Teams

P. Paixão

, J. Sampaio

and R. Duarte

Escola Superior de Educação, Instituto Politécnico de Beja, Beja, Portugal

Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal

Spertlab, Ciper, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

1 OBJECTIVES

In recent years there have been several studies

seeking to understand how contextual variables such

as game location, the level of the opponent and the

evolving game status typically influence football

teams’ performances. Usually, investigations

examine the effects of these situational variables on

physical/conditioning, technical, tactical and mental

performance in football (Taylor et al., 2008). The

evolving game status (winning, losing or drawing) is

one of the most relevant situational variables

influencing performance in Association Football

(Lago, 2009). Hughes and Reed (2005) reported that

game status affected the frequency of shots, with

less incidence of shots associated to losing status.

On the other hand, other studies demonstrated that

ball possession depends on the evolution of the

score-line, with teams having greater possession

when they are losing compared to when they are

winning or drawing (Lago et al. 2007, 2009).

However, some studies have highlighted the

importance to consider and examine each team

individually since their different identities may

moderate the impact of the situational variables

(Hughes and Reed, 2005; Collet, 2013). The purpose

of this study was to examine the differential effect of

the evolving game status in the passing sequences

leading to a shot at goal, of four top-level European

association football teams.

2 METHODS

A total of 20 matches of the final stage of UEFA

Champions League (2008-2009) were analysed and

222 passing sequences from 4 different teams (FC

Barcelona, Manchester United FC, Chelsea FC,

Arsenal FC) were selected for further analysis. As

inclusion criteria, all the passing sequences that

ended with a shot at goal were selected in order to

capture the way how each team created goal-scoring

opportunities. These teams were selected as the most

successful ones since them reached the semi-finals

of the competition. The dependent variable studied

in each sequence was the number of passes per shot

ratio (Hughes and Franks, 2005; Collet, 2013). For

each team, the passing sequences were distributed

by winning, losing and drawing game episodes.

We performed an automatic cluster classification

analysis (Two Step cluster) with the overall data,

which allowed identifying three groups of passing

sequences divided by their substantial differences.

Secondly we applied another automatic cluster

classification (Two Step Cluster) to identify

differences within each game status and to compare

for differences between groups of long and short

sequences. Finally we applied the Chi-square test

with contingency tables (between -1.5 and 1.5)

comparing the four teams with the evolving game

status.

3 RESULTS

The results revealed that Barcelona was the team

with large number of passing sequences, while

Chelsea showed the lowest total number of passing

sequences. When teams were losing there was a

tendency for an absence of short passing sequences,

while winning teams increased the relative number

of these short sequences. Data also revealed

important differences between teams, with

Barcelona and Manchester United showing superior

capacity to increase retention of possession when

drawing than when winning.

Paixão P., Sampaio J. and Duarte R..

The Differential Effect of the Evolving Game Status in the Passing Sequences of Top-Level European Football Teams.

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Figure 1: Number of long passing sequences (group 1) and

short passing sequences (group 2) by team and according

game status (p > 0.05).

4 DISCUSSION

Generally, in the overall data the number of passing

sequences identified in each game status increased

with a higher favourable scoreline. This data

somewhat contradicts Lago et al. (2012), who found

a decreasing likelihood of reaching the scoring zone

as the status of the game was more favourable. The

four teams investigated in this study used

preferentially long passing sequences when they

were losing or drawing, and short passing sequences

when they were winning, which agrees with Lago

and Martin (2007) and Lago (2009) who found

greater possession when teams were losing.

The results obtained emphasise the idea of Lago

(2009), for whom the strategies in football are

influenced by the scoreline and teams change their

style of play during the match accordingly.

The results revealed also substantial differences

of passing sequences length between teams and

game status. These findings mean that different

teams distinctively adapt themselves to changes in

relevant performance constraints such as the

evolving game status, which reveal what Hughes

and Reed (2005) called team’s signatures of play.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggested that top-level European teams

tended to differently adapt the length of their passing

sequences as a function of the evolving game status.

These different behaviours of teams in similar game

contexts support the idea of Castellano,

Casamichana and Lago (2012) that teams can be

differentiated between them based on the relation

between their possession characteristics and

performance effectiveness.

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ARSENAL

BARCELONA

CHELSEA

MANUNITED

ARSENAL

BARCELONA

CHELSEA

MANUNITED

ARSENAL

BARCELONA

CHELSEA

MANUNITED

LOSING DRAWING WINNING

14 14

Longsequences(group1) Shortsequences(group2)