A Comparative Tournament Analysis of Attacking Performance Variable in Opening Round Fixtures of the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cup.

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Author
Small, Liam
Date
2015Type
Thesis
Publisher
Cardiff Metropolitan University
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The purpose of this study was to examine opening round fixtures in the 2010 and
2014 FIFA World Cup (N=32) to assess the differences, which may have occurred
between tournaments and between winning, drawing an losing teams. The
difference in the number of goals scored between the samples was a key indicator,
which suggested something radically changed in relation to style of play, defensive
capabilities or attacking intent.
Lapsed time, match analysis was conducted after creating a specifically designed
code window in StudioCode (Sportstec, Australia) computerised analysis software.
Selected performance indicators (PIs) associated with successful performance in
football were recorded as a means to measure the differences between
tournaments and within tournament. Altman’s (1991) Kappa coefficient score was
used to measures intra-observe reliability of the analyst. Kappa scores all reached
‘good levels of agreement’ or higher.
One-way ANOVA revealed no significant differences (p>0.05) in association with
the length of time teams spent in possession, between tournaments or between
subgroups. A significant difference was observed after conducting a non-parametric
Mann-Whitney U test (p<0.05) on the total number of possessions between
samples, 2014 teams made significantly fewer possessions than 2010 teams.
Significantly more goals were scored in the 2014 tournament (p<0.05) compared to
the 2010 tournament, whilst teams in the 2014 samples also had a significantly
higher shot on target ratio that of teams 4 years earlier. The number of corners was
also shown to be significantly difference between tournaments (p<0.05). In both
tournaments, winning teams had a greater shot on target ratio than losing teams
and drawing teams along with shot supremacy ratio. No significant differences were
found between winning teams between tournaments, whilst a number of differences
between losing teams were found. Number of goals, final third entries, attempts off
target and shot on target ratio were all significantly difference between losing teams
between tournaments (p<0.05).
iii
In conclusion, the differences associated between tournaments were predominantly
associated between losing teams. The 2010 losing teams performance significantly
worse on many performance indicators than losing teams 4 years later. The reason
for lower performance levels of the 2010 losing teams could be attributed to a
number of factors. The quality of the opposition in relation to FIFA ranking was far
greater in the 2010 tournament, teams were often playing teams ranked much
higher than them, which may have resulted in team playing a more cautious style of
football, as teams were wary of committing too many men to attacking
opportunities. A second possible explanation could be because the losing teams
were simply of a lower calibre and failed to capitalise of goal scoring opportunities
and limit the attacking chances of the opposition.
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