Daniel Nordheim Pedersen World-Class Football Players' Visual Exploratory Behaviour A close-up video analysis in UEFA Champions League matches Master thesis in Sport Sciences Department of Coaching and Psychology Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, 2016 k Preface I was first introduced to the world of perception in football when professor Geir Jordet had a presentation about it in my first year at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. My immediate thought was “why have I not heard about this before, this is essential to football performance, and I have played football for 18 years without knowing about this important skill.” So when Geir asked me to join a project that was going to explore visual exploratory behaviour among some of the absolute best midfield and forward players in the world, the answer was easy, and I will never regret that answer. The task of selecting players and gaining access to these players started in the last year of my Bachelor degree—this process was difficult, time consuming, and at times I felt discouraged for not obtaining access. Fortunately, in my first year of my Master’s degree, the Football Association of Norway (NFF), on behalf of this project, contacted UEFA who granted us access to film the players we wanted to analyse in UEFA Champions League matches. In order to carry out this project, a lot of planning and organising was required: over 100 emails were sent between me, Geir, NFF, and UEFA during this project, arranging camera equipment, booking hotels and flights, accreditation pick-up, attending TV- meetings at the venues, and analysing the data material. This resulted in many late evenings with practical work, many hours traveling, and many hours filming. In addition, an attempt to write the thesis as a scientific article was carried out, where an almost complete article, and a complementary theory and method part was developed. However, 24 days before deadline my supervisor advised me to write the thesis as a traditional thesis and abandon the article format because of the vague guidelines as to how an article structured thesis should look like. So I abandoned the article and will come back to it after this assignment—the desire to publish several articles from this project is why I chose to write the thesis in English. That being said, the experiences I had in doing this project makes up for all the hours with work, and I see myself as very fortunate to have been given this opportunity to conduct a master thesis about something I believe is very interesting and essential in the sport of football. It is therefore with a mixture of relief and pride that I conclude this chapter of my life, and at the same time I am wondering what the next chapter will be. 3 World-Class Football Players’ Visual Exploratory Behaviour Takk til bidragsytere! Veileder: Geir Jordet for muligheten og tilliten til å gjennomføre prosjektet, i tillegg til gode råd, innspill og faglig kompetanse. NFF: Dag Eggen for hjelpen med å få kontakt med UEFA, uten dette bidraget hadde ikke prosjektet blitt gjennomført med samme kvalitet. UEFA: Ledelse og media ansvarlig for tilgang til kampene, samt service på arenaene som sørget for video materiale av høyeste kvalitet. Mathias Haugaasen for gode samtaler, råd og svært hjelpfulle kommentarer på diverse utkast. Evnen til å alltid ta seg tid til å svare på noen raske spørsmål er høyt verdsatt. Kenneth Wilsgaard for mye viktig hjelp og innholdsrike samtaler på ballabben, takk for at du alltid tar deg tid til å tilby en hjelpende hånd. Einar Sigmundstad for gode samtaler og for å ha låst meg inn på ballabben utallige ganger. Lasse Nettum for innlæring og tilgang til redigeringsprogrammet benyttet i prosjektet. Thomas Førde for avgjørende hjelp med analyse og gode samtaler på balllabben. Kristin Andersen for hjelp med bestilling av reiser og hotell. Gerda Wever for gjennomlesning og retting av språkfeil. Legendene: Hallgeir Martinsen, Ole-Jørgen Sylling Berg, Stian Rasch og Mikkel Bjørnstad for vennskap og svært viktige ikke faglige bidrag i hverdagen, uten dere hadde mine sosiale antenner tatt kvelden i løpet av denne prosessen. Min familie på andre siden av fjellet som alltid støtter meg og har troen på meg. Venner og medstudenter som har bidratt til at disse årene har inneholdt mye glede og uforglemmelige øyeblikk, her er det mange som bør føle seg truffet! Til slutt, men aller viktigst, min samboer Hedda. Din støtte og tålmodighet har vært helt avgjørende og er høyst verdsatt, din evne til å gi meg energi og glede i hverdagen er uvurderlig, nå er det min tur til å lage middag og vaske leiligheten! 4 World-Class Football Players’ Visual Exploratory Behaviour Abstract The overall purpose of this study was to examine how football players explore the environment and use the information to prospectively control subsequent actions with the ball. A real world field study was conducted and Gibson’s (1966; 1979) ecological approach to visual perception was used as conceptual framework. The relationship between visual exploratory behaviour (VEB) and performance, VEB and various situational characteristics, and the timing of the players’ VEB were examined. Eight world-class midfield and forward players (M = 31.5 years, SD = 3.25) were filmed “close-up” in five matches of the 2014/2015 UEFA Champions League group stages (M = 56.13 minutes, SD = 40.36). These footages were edited together with the official UEFA match broadcast, creating a split screen video for further examination of a total of 269 situations and 851 visual exploratory behaviours (searches). Results suggests a positive relationship between VEB prior to receiving the ball and performance, where players are more successful in their forward actions and complete more penetrating forward passes when exploring more compared to when exploring less. Further, when players perform extensive VEB, they execute more actions in the attacking direction, are more forward oriented when receiving, and are under less defensive pressure compared to when exploring less. Finally, the players’ timing of each search suggests that they initiate significantly more searches than expected in the immediate moment the ball position and/or direction is determined. In conclusion, this study suggests a positive relationship between VEB and performance in football, and that VEB is used by players to get in a better position to execute their subsequent actions. In addition, a VEB timing pattern is proposed. The development of visual exploratory behaviour should be highly emphasised in football players’ daily training, and some practical implications are presented. Keywords: Visual perception; Affordances; Visual exploratory behaviour frequency 5 World-Class Football Players’ Visual Exploratory Behaviour Table of Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................................ 3 Takk til bidragsytere! ........................................................................................................... 4 Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... 6 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 8 2. Introduction to theory ................................................................................................ 10 2.1 Cognitive theory of perception ..........................................................................................11 2.1.1 Laboratory research .................................................................................................................... 12 2.2 Ecological approach to visual perception ......................................................................18 2.2.1 Real world research ..................................................................................................................... 22 3. Method .............................................................................................................................. 25 3.1 Participants ..............................................................................................................................25 3.2 Real world field study ...........................................................................................................25 3.3 Procedure ..................................................................................................................................26 3.3.1 Multidimensional concept of expertise ................................................................................ 26 3.3.2 Getting access to the players .................................................................................................... 28 3.4 Data Collection ........................................................................................................................30 3.4.1 Split-screen footage ...................................................................................................................... 30 3.5 Situation inclusion criteria .................................................................................................31 3.6 Dependent Variables .............................................................................................................33 3.7 Data analysis