Game interruptions in elite soccer

Abstract

The objectives of the study were to analyse game interruptions of league soccer in detail and the tactical use of game interruptions. Sixteen matches of a German first league soccer team were observed. An observational system was designed to assess interruption types, score, duration of interruption, location of interruption, time of interruption and number of occurrences. Results showed that there is an average of 108 interruptions per match. Throw-ins (40) and free kicks (33) were most frequent. Goal kicks (17), corner kicks (10), substitutions (4), and kick offs (3) occurred less often. Drop balls, penalties, and injuries occurred least often. For 38% of the total match time observed, matches were halted. The mean duration of running and interrupted match parts were 32.1 s and 18.7 s, respectively. The analysis showed significant differences concerning the influence of the location of interruption, score, and time of interruption on the duration of different interruption types (P < 0.05). The results of the study showed the tactical use of game interruptions during league soccer matches, e.g. goal kicks of the leading team take longer towards the end of the match. Examining game interruptions has turned out to be a valuable source of information adding to our knowledge of soccer. We have shown evidence that the durations of many interruptions serve tactical purposes, a well-known hypothesis in practice.     

‘Connected to Something’: Soccer and the Transnational Passions,Memories and Communities of Sydney's Italian Migrants

This paper explores the importance soccer can play in the lives, identities and memories of migrants by drawing on 32 oral history interviews conducted with Italians who settled in Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s. Sport can provide an illuminating lens for analysing the experience of migrants, because not only are sports sites of individual, regional, national and transnational identities, they can also facilitate social inclusion or, conversely, become sites of exclusion. Soccer in Australia is often celebrated as a multicultural game. At the same time, the expressions of the complex histories of migration, colonialism, exploitation and racial and ethnic discrimination that have shaped the game have often been silenced. The interviews show that soccer has been a key site of negotiation, agency and at times resistance for first and second generation migrants. We also argue that, while it is the de-ethnicisation of soccer that has understandably dominated media, political and academic debate, the concern of these migrants in recent years has been mostly with the loss of memory and with the removal of an important history made of shared relationships and bonding experiences.     

The Cups That Cheered – A History of the Sigerson,Fitzgibbon and Higher Education Gaelic Games

This article follows up on Adrian Harvey's piece ‘The emergence of football in nineteenth-century England: the historiographic debate’ [International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no. 18 (2013): 2154–2163]. It reviews the historiography of Scottish football on the period before the First World War. There is considerable literature on the topic, but it is not by any means evenly distributed to cover Scotland's geography, nor does it give balanced coverage to a wide-enough variety of thematic subjects. The author places this historiography into six broad categories which reflect the audience, research interests and methodology of the pieces, and offers a critical assessment of work still to be done in what is a disparate field.     

Professional Football in Apartheid South Africa: Leisure,Consumption and Identity in the National Football League, 1959–1977

A growing body of academic and popular literature considers the history of South African football. These and existing publications pay little or no attention to the emergence of white professional football in apartheid South Africa. The National Football League (NFL) challenged the amateur game and introduced professional football to the country. During its 17-year existence, the NFL grew each season with large attendances until its demise in 1977. In addition, the NFL imported a range of international players, invited foreign teams and actively engaged in the political debates in South African sport at the time. The NFL was instrumental in popularising the game across the country for all South Africans. The NFL became the most popular sports entertainment of choice for South Africans during this period. Finally, the NFL actively engaged in a campaign of destroying rival non-racial anti-apartheid leagues while simultaneously co-opting less progressive organisations.     

The Origins of Football Debate: Comments on Adrian Harvey's Historiography

This article is intended as a reply to Adrian Harvey's recent historiography of football in which he continues to distort the story of the initial development of the game. It not only refutes the revisionist hypothesis of an influential football sub-culture based around public houses but also offers an alternative explanation of the game's past, largely based on the influence of ex-public schoolboys and former university undergraduates. It seeks to push the debate a step further by robustly re-asserting the meagre nature of the revisionist evidence in addition to Adrian Harvey's poor scholarship.     

Long Balls in the Dying Moments: Exploring the Decline of South Africa's National Football League, 1970–1977

During the 1970s, a number of prominent British and Irish footballers – the likes of which included Gordon Banks, George Best, Bobby Charlton, Geoff Hurst and Bobby Moore – played as ‘guest players’ on a short-term basis for various clubs in South Africa's National Football League (NFL), a ‘whites-only’ professional league that spanned the period 1959–1977. Coupled with this, NFL clubs from the outset also secured the services of additional foreign players of lesser standing on longer term contracts in an attempt to improve the standard of play. The strategy of importing high-profile ‘guests’ during the 1970s ultimately proved unsuccessful in sustaining the league as it disbanded after the 1977 season. Utilising archival documentation, contemporary media reports and existing football works, this essay aims to establish the reasons behind the NFL's demise. Two particular factors under consideration are the erosion of the league's entertainment value and the deteriorating economic conditions within South Africa at the time. These elements are juxtaposed with additional factors such as the rise in popularity of multiracial football, the resulting drain of sponsorship away from the white professional game, as well as political machinations within South Africa during this period.     

Early Football and the Emergence of Modern Soccer,c. 1840–1880

The origins of the modern football codes have attracted considerable attention from historians of sport over the past two decades, resulting in a vigorous debate between the self-described ‘revisionists’, led by Adrian Harvey, and the followers of Eric Dunning, dubbed by their opponents as the ‘orthodox’ view. However, this article argues that both sides commit the same methodological errors: an overestimation of the importance of written rules, an ahistoric view of culture and continuity, and a tendency to view the past through the lens of the present. By re-examining the historical record of early forms of football and presenting a broader contextual perspective for the emergence of the football codes in the 1840 to 1880 period, the article aims to address some of the key historiographical issues that confront historians of sport today.     

Tennis

The study investigated differences in the one‐ (SH) and two‐handed (DH) backhands when hit flat, across‐court (AC) and down‐the‐line (DL), and with heavy topspin DL (TDL). The ability to disguise each of these backhands when hitting the above strokes was also assessed. Eighteen college‐level male tennis players, identified as having a high performance topspin SH (n = 6) or DH (n = 12) backhand drive, participated in the study. Players were required to hit three AC, DL and TDL backhands from the baseline with their preferred technique, while being filmed with two high‐speed video cameras operating at 200 Hz. The highest horizontal velocity backhand for each stroke was analysed. Results indicated that the sequential coordination of five body segments (hips, shoulder, upper arm, forearm, and hand/racquet rotations) was required for the execution of the SH stroke. The same number of segments were generally coordinated in the DH stroke (hips, shoulders, and varying degrees of upper arm and forearm rotations followed by hand/racquet movement). Mature players produced comparable racquet horizontal velocities 0.005 s prior to impact using either the SH or DH backhand technique. The SH backhand was characterised by a more rotated shoulder alignment than the DH stroke (SH: 119.1°; DH: 83.4°) at the completion of the backswing. At impact the ball was impacted further in front (SH: 0.59 m; DH: 0.40 m) and a similar distance to the side of the body (SH: 0.75 m; DH: 0.70 m). Players using the DH backhand technique delayed the horizontal acceleration of the racquet towards the ball (SH: 0.13 s; DH: 0.08 s prior to impact) and thus were capable of displaying a similar hitting motion closer to impact than players with a SH technique.     

Characteristics of the start in women's World Cup skeleton

This study characterizes key elements of the start in elite female World Cup skeleton athletes. The top 20 female competitors in three World Cup races were videotaped within a calibrated space to allow the following components of the start to be quantified: (1) acceleration (velocity at 15-m mark, time to 15-m mark), (2) capacity (time to load, total number of steps to load), and (3) load (velocity at 45-m mark). A correlation analysis was used to establish the relationship between the variables of interest and overall start time (15- to 65-m mark). Velocity at the 15-m mark accounted for 86% of the variance in overall start time at St. Moritz and 85% at Sigulda. A stepwise regression analysis revealed that approximately 89% of the variation in start time could be explained by velocity at the 15-m mark, time to load, and velocity at the 45-m mark. Of the variables analysed in this study, rapid acceleration to attain a high velocity at the 15-m mark was the most important component of a fast overall start time. The importance of the time to load and velocity at the 45-m mark vary according to the different track characteristics.