Team Sports

Ball possession as the star of the show

Main
Challenges

EXPLORATORY ACTIVITIES

"Drills for athletic skills through exploratory activities for a single player or a team."

SUPPORT FOR COACHES

Support for coaches so that they can assume new teaching responsibilities.

METHODOLOGICAL COACHING

Bring about new forms of methodological coaching for players based on implicit learning.

NEW WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING OUR GAME

Development of new ways to understand — and put into practice — our objectives for a creative, proactive, and collective game.

INNOVATIVE STRUCTURES FOR TEAM ORGANIZATION

Implementation of innovative structures for collective organization based on the fundamental goals of each of the sports divisions of the Club.

HOLISTIC SOLUTIONS FOR CONTINUITY OF PLAY

Understanding match situations in a holistic, interdisciplinary manner in order to propose solutions for continuity of play.

Team Sports

WE SEEK TO EMPOWER PLAYERS’ SELF-ORGANIZATION AND AUTONOMY THROUGH CREATIVE AND UNIQUE WORK.

Team sports are characterized by the fact that they unfold in changing environments, so athletes need to adapt their movements, relationships and interactions in a non-linear way. Through creative and unique work, we seek to strengthen self-organization and encourage autonomy in our players.


In all of the team sports that make up our Club, the ball itself generates a perpetual state of imbalance; thus, we seek always to take the initiative and impose our collective interpretation on our opponents.

RELATED NOTES

THE INFLUENCE OF THE COACH’S LEADERSHIP STYLE ON INJURIES IN ELITE FOOTBALL

Having all players healthy and ready for competition is one of the main training objectives in top-level football.

KINEMATIC DEMANDS IN FIELD HOCKEY. HOW DO PLAYERS MOVE DURING A MATCH?

The introduction of the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology into the world of sports enables us to gain specific information about the speeds reached or distances travelled during training and competition.

PRE-SEASON DESIGN: THE INFLUENCE OF INITIAL RESULTS ON A TEAM’S FINAL RANKING

One of the first decisions a club’s coaching staff must take is the design of pre-season training.

PRE-SEASON. GETTING READY TO SHAPE THE PHYSICAL FITNESS OF PLAYERS

The objective of the pre-season is to seek the best individual and collective physical fitness of the team before beginning the competition.

SMALL-SIDED GAMES IN FOOTBALL. ARE ADAPTATIONS THE SAME FOR PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS AND AMATEURS?

Small-sided games (SSG) are very common training tasks for any team.

THE USE OF WELLNESS QUESTIONNAIRES IN FOOTBALL

Training load (TL) management is a key component for optimising performance. Understanding TL will allow us to evaluate fatigue and to anticipate overload and overtraining in order to minimise injury risk.

APPLYING THE PRINCIPLES OF JOHAN CRUYFF TO DATA SCIENCE

With such an ambitious goal, the Barça Innovation Hub has presented its research at this year’s world-renowned MIT Sloan Sports Analytics international conference.

EVALUATION OF THE INTERNAL LOAD IN FOOTBALL: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

The development of elite sports has meant that players are constantly exposed to higher training loads, busier competition schedules and shorter rest periods.

A PIONEERING RESEARCH ON SHOULDER MUSCLE ACTIVATION IN HANDBALL PLAYERS

Handball is one of the sports that are encompassed by the term overhead, a concept that includes sports based on a movement in which the arm is brought above the head.

FOOTBALL IS FOR FOOTBALLERS

FC Barcelona recently held a conference entitled “Barça: Female and Diverse” to coincide with the International Women’s Day, organized at the Camp Nou facilities.

MAXIMUM DEMAND SCENARIOS IN POSITIONAL PLAY: ARE THEY EQUALLY REPLICATED ACROSS ALL POSITIONS?

Players’ conditional response during competition, for example, distance covered at a run, has traditionally been described using the average value covered during a half or full game.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PERCEIVED EXERTION RATING ON FOOTBALL TRAINING AND COMPETITION.

Monitoring training load is one of the fundamental tools for optimising the performance of both elite athletes in general and football players in particular.

HOW DO THE NUMEROUS CONSTRAINTS AFFECTING ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE RELATE TO ONE ANOTHER?

We know that athletic performance is a complex phenomenon that depends on numerous constraints, but do we know how these constraints relate to and interact with each other?

A SIMPLE AND INNOVATIVE INDICATOR FOR WHEELCHAIR BASKETBALL AND WHEELCHAIR RUGBY TRAINING

Despite the growing interest in Paralympic sports, research into performance in elite wheelchair sports has seen very little development.

ENTROPY, A NEW MEASUREMENT IN STRENGTH TRAINING

The ability to sprint is essential in the majority of team sports, including rugby, soccer, and basketball. But this ability is not developed in stable and controlled conditions: players are constantly subjected to variable demands, whether receiving, carrying, passing, hitting, or throwing the ball.

ARE SMALL-SIDED GAMES THE SOLUTION TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS?

One of today’s most attention-grabbing topics among sports researchers, coaches and managers have to do with the study of maximal demand scenarios, also known as “worst case scenarios”.

POSITION SPECIFIC AND POSITIONAL PLAY TRAINING IN ELITE FOOTBALL: CONTEXT MATTERS

Those who have watched elite football across the last decade, realise that the game is more demanding than ever. This places more emphasis on training methods to prepare players for the rigors of the game.

WHICH VARIABLES DO WE TRAINERS LOOK AT TO HELP US MAKE DECISIONS?

Of all the variables provided by the systems that monitor and record our players’ activity, what is the most relevant information? This is a question that all coaches will probably face when they begin managing the large volumes of data generated in every training session.

FC BARCELONA: HOW OUR NEW RESEARCH HELPED UNLOCK THE ‘BARÇA WAY’

For the first time, our new research may provide some insight into the training methodology and, potentially, the secrets of the club’s success. These “secrets” could be closely associated with the theories put forward by coach Paco Seirul·lo and how they link with cutting edge sports science.

HOW PHYSICAL DEMANDS ON FOOTBALL PLAYERS VARY BY THEIR POSITION

Although there are several studies on this topic, many of them have analyzed these demands by looking at just a few variables or using very broad timeframes. A new study completed by physical trainers from F.C. Barcelona has analyzed several of these details more closely.

RECOVERY NUTRITION FOR FOOTBALL: BUILDING A TEAM

Degrees of freedom or degrees of slavery?

The understanding of the modifying variables of the game, based on the degrees of freedom.

Soccer from First Principles

The goal of this post is to outline a series of principles that are considered to be crucial to understand the development of FC Barcelona’s playing style.

ECCENTRIC EXERCISES: STUDYING “VACCINES” FOR MUSCLES

Training using eccentric exercises is important to prevent possible damage. However, intensive training can also cause muscle damage, so it is critical to be vigilant in order to keep injury risk to an absolute minimum.

AN OBJECTIVE CLASSIFICATION OF MUSCLE INJURIES

An objective and appropriate classification would improve the accuracy of prognosis, allow treatment to be adjusted and reduce the risk of re-injury.

STABILITY OR INSTABILITY, IS THAT THE QUESTION?

The importance of building a game model in football.

STUDY OF HIGH INTENSITY ACCELERATIONS AND DECELERATIONS IN SOCCER

A new dimension of analysis suggests that maximum accelerations occur with a frequency 8x greater than sprint actions.

THE LEVEL OF RESISTANCE AS A MODERATOR OF THE TRAINING LOAD

Cardiovascular endurance manifests as a moderator of the load result to which the athlete is exposed.

Spaces in Soccer from a Quantitative Perspective

In the words of Johan Cruyff, “Players, in reality, have the ball for 3 minutes, on average. So, the most important thing is: what do you do during those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball? That is what determines whether you’re a good player or not.” 

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