Transfer of Skills from Futsal to Football in Youth Players
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TRANSFER OF SKILLS FROM FUTSAL TO FOOTBALL IN YOUTH PLAYERS Final report Mr Luca Oppici Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living (ISEAL) College of Sport and Exercise Science, Victoria University, Australia Email: [email protected] Phone: +61 452 662 909 Team: Prof Damian Farrow, Dr Fabio Serpiello, Dr Derek Panchuk Page 1 Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Research questions ................................................................................................................................. 5 Research hypotheses .............................................................................................................................. 5 State of knowledge .................................................................................................................................. 6 Methodology ............................................................................................................................................ 8 Subjects ................................................................................................................................................. 10 Procedure .............................................................................................................................................. 10 Data analysis ......................................................................................................................................... 11 Validation of a new gaze coding method ........................................................................................... 11 Variables ............................................................................................................................................ 16 Results ................................................................................................................................................... 19 Football – Futsal comparison ............................................................................................................. 20 Transfer of skills from futsal to football .............................................................................................. 23 Transfer of skills – a developmental perspective ............................................................................... 26 Summary of the main results ................................................................................................................. 28 Discussion ............................................................................................................................................. 30 Practical implications ............................................................................................................................. 34 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 36 Page 2 Introduction A player’s ability to read the game, choose the best available decision and accurately execute the related action, is essential for success in team sports such as football where the game dynamics change rapidly. Consequently, technical skills, such as ball control and passing, and perceptual skills underpinning decision making, such as who to pass the ball to, form the core of a player’s development. In this context, sport federations and coaches play an essential role in talent development by planning and delivering appropriate programs aimed at promoting the realisation of an individual’s potential (T. Reilly, Bangsbo, & Franks, 2000). In more recent times, many UEFA members, such as Italy, England, Spain, etc., have introduced modified versions of football aiming to facilitate children’s development by scaling the equipment and rules to the individual’s needs and capabilities. Children start playing 5vs5 and then gradually move to 11vs11. The underlying rationale was that in 5vs5 and 7vs7 children are more involved in the action executing higher number of technical actions than 11vs11 (Capranica, Tessitore, Guidetti, & Figura, 2001). Interestingly when mini-soccer was compared to futsal it has been demonstrated that youth players perform more technical actions in futsal compared to mini soccer (Milligan, Borrie, & Horn, 2008). Therefore, futsal could be a more appropriate training activity for young footballers. Furthermore, this idea has been promoted by many professional players and coaches. For example, Pele, one of the most iconic football players in the history of Brazil football, stated “Futsal requires you to think and play fast. It makes everything easier when you later switch to football”(FIFA, 2012). It is likely that the futsal ball, which is easier to control, promotes the acquisition of fine technical abilities and the higher player density on the pitch facilitates the development of perceptual skills that underpin sound decision making. However, there is a lack of scientific evidence and empirical research to support these anecdotes. In particular, it is unclear which specific abilities could be improved by practicing futsal and whether those abilities could be transferred to football. Page 3 The primary aim of this project is to investigate the transfer of technical and perceptual/decision making skills between futsal and football contexts in youth players. This project will be the first attempt to investigate the relationship between the two sports from a skill development perspective. The results of this study will reveal whether futsal can consolidate the development of specific football related skills. It is important that current practice is based on scientific evidence rather than on ‘lay’ opinion (Thomas Reilly & Williams, 2003). Consequently, guidelines will be provided to sport federations and coaches in an effort to improve the current development programs and perhaps increase football participation. Page 4 Research questions 1. Does futsal practice facilitate the acquisition of superior technical and perceptual/decision making skills than football in youth individuals? 2. Are those skills transferable from futsal to football? 3. How do experience and age influence the transfer process? Research hypotheses 1. Futsal players develop more efficient perceptual/decision making skills and quicker technical skills than football players. 2. The above mentioned skills are transferable from futsal to football, as futsal players will show a better performance in the football task than football players. 3. There is a general positive correlation between age/expertise and transfer, namely more expert players will show higher degree of transfer. However, the oldest groups may show a negative transfer due to a high specialization in their discipline. Page 5 State of knowledge Transfer of learning has been defined as “the influence of previous experiences on performing a skill in a new context or on learning a new skill” ((Magill, 2011)p.190). The influence can be positive or negative. Positive transfer, as opposed to negative, occurs when previous experiences facilitate the performance of the new skill or in the new context. Consequently, the action of kicking the ball could be facilitated by previous football experience or could be interfered by previous swimming experience. In this context, some specific training activities can have a higher transfer than other activities. Therefore, it is essential to understand how the transfer works when designing training tasks. Transfer occurs between tasks sharing similar elements, such as inter limb coordination or goal- directed movements (Thorndike, 1906); or sharing similar cognitive (Judd, 1908) or learning (Lee, 1988) processes. Other factors such as individual’s level of expertise (Rosalie & Muller, 2014), physical and social context (Barnett & Ceci, 2002) also influence the degree of transfer. In the context of movement skill acquisition, the individual’s patterns of coordination which refer to the intra and inter limb synchronization play an important role. If the body coordination developed through previous experiences matches with the demands of the new task, the transfer process is promoted (Kelso & Zanone, 2002). The constraints-led approach contends that body coordination is shaped by the interaction between organismic, environmental and task constraints (Davids, Button, & Bennett, 2008). Organismic constraints, which refer to an individual’s attributes, and environmental constraints, such as light and temperature, are hardly controllable and manipulable in training settings. On the other hand, task constraints which represent the characteristics of the task, such as equipment and rules, can be manipulated during training. Consequently, coaches can promote the development of specific body coordination by manipulating the task constraints influencing, as consequence, the transfer of the learned skill. Page 6 Futsal and association football are both versions of football sharing similar components, such as parts of the body involved, and similar conceptual processes. Therefore, a certain degree of transfer is expected between the two disciplines. Furthermore, the task constraints of the two sports will shape the development of sport-specific coordination. This coordination will then influence a positive or negative transfer. Previous research has investigated the ball type as a constraint on the development of technical skills showing