A comparison of passing and possession performances for teams that played in Manaus during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this study was to provide a comparison between both the passing and possession performances of teams who performed in Manaus at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. This was due to much debate before the tournament on the factor of playing in the heart of the Amazonia compared to playing at other venues. Post event analysis of matches played at the World Cup (n=20) for the nations competing in Manaus (n=8) was achieved through the use of two code windows made in Studiocode V5 (Sportstec, Australia). Pilot studies were used to provide the research with experience of using the systems whilst reliability was achieved through the use of Kappa values. The results of the study were achieved through the use of both Microsoft Excel and SPSS. A nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to identify any significant differences, statistical significance was set at (p<0.05). Possession based results showed teams to have higher mean possession times (16.4 seconds) in Manaus compared to the other fixtures (13.0 seconds). The non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test also showed teams to spend significantly more time in the attacking third (p<0.05) in Manaus compared to the other fixtures. Passing results showed teams to play a higher proportion of backward passes in Manaus whilst pass completion rates for the majority of the passing variables was higher in Manaus. Furthermore, when playing in Manaus teams played a higher percentage of long passes in the final two periods of a match compared to the earlier periods where short balls were played more frequently. Alongside the possession and passing based data, tracking data was obtained to supplement the above findings. This data found that the overall and player mean distances covered in Manaus was lower compared to the other fixtures.