BIHUB PATH

Cookies

We use our own and third party cookies and other similar technologies to offer you our services, personalize and analyze your browsing, which allows us to understand how our website is being used and which contents are more relevant. Likewise, it also enables us the use of additional functionalities such as showing third party contents or sharing contents with social networks, as well as managing the advertising we show you both on our website and on other third party websites, which could be personalized depending on your browsing and interests in our contents. You can accept all cookies clicking the button “ACCEPT COOKIES” or refuse them by clicking the button “REFUSE COOKIES”. For more information access our Cookies Policy available through the “MORE INFORMATION” button.

MORE INFORMATION

8 October, 2019

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

Team Sports
Team sports performance
318K

Having all players healthy and ready for competition is one of the main training objectives in top-level football. The monthly economic cost that a player injury has on a team playing in the Champions League is €500,000.1 We must also, of course, consider the negative consequences an injury has on the team’s performance.

Researchers and clubs are trying to identify which factors can increase or decrease the likelihood of a player suffering an injury. The behaviour of a coach can influence this outcome. We know that changing a coach increases the number of team muscle injuries.2 The frequency of muscle injuries is 2.3 times higher in the two weeks after the arrival of a new coach, and 1.9 times higher one month after.

A recent study3 has also shown that the leadership style of a coach correlates with injuries and the ability of players to train and compete. The study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2018, is based on an analysis of 36 elite teams from 17 different European countries between 2012 and 2016. At each annual meeting held at the end of every season, the head of the medical services from each club evaluated the leadership style used by the coach with their team using the Global Transformational Leadership (GTL) scale.4. The head of each medical team answered seven questions about their perception on how democratic the behaviour of the coach was using a 5-point Likert scale, from “rarely or never” (score = 1) to “very frequently if not always” (score = 5). Higher scores suggest a more democratic leadership style, and lower scores suggest the opposite. The seven scores were used to establish an average score for each coach. The teams were classified into three groups depending on the score that the coach received in terms of the democracy of their leadership style: low (score of 1-2), medium (3) or high (4-5) level. Doctors also described the frequency and types of injuries suffered by their teams during the season and while the players were participating in training sessions and competitive matches.

The results suggested four major conclusions:

  • There is a correlation between leadership style and the incidence of a serious injury in players during training.

 

  • Coaches who tended to use a democratic/participatory leadership style had a lower incidence of serious injuries among the members of their team. The correlation between both aspects explains the 6% variation in the frequency of serious injuries.

 

  • Players had higher training session attendance when coaches encouraged and recognised the efforts of other members of the coaching staff, supported innovative thinking, encouraged confidence and acted as role models. Participation was 4% higher in teams with coaches who had a high level of democratic behaviour compared to those who demonstrated lower levels (81% vs. 85%, p<0.05).

 

  • The incidence of serious injuries was 29-40% (p<0.05) lower in clubs where the coaches conveyed a clear and positive vision, supported the other members of the coaching staff and encouraged and recognised player achievements.

Practical applications suggest that coaches can adopt a series of actions in order to reduce the risk of injury:

  1. Focus on the team’s training.
  2. Leave team training in the hands of their assistants. They should be the ones who improve physical condition, reduce injury risks, improve recovery after matches or help increase the athletes’ levels of self-efficacy.
  3. Ask questions and show interest in individual work. Coaching assistants will feel more valued and the players will be more involved in what they do.
  4. Include content from individual training in team planning, this includes training load.
  5. Individualise player training as every athlete has different needs. There are different sports cultures, specific positions, histories of injury, ages, motivations, etc.

In any case, despite the benefits of a coach’s democratic leadership style, opting for a more authoritarian or laissez-faire leadership model may be advisable under other circumstances. This will depend on other factors such as, for example, the age of the players, the point they are at in their sports career, the time available for training, whether or not the situation to be resolved is controllable, or the club’s sports culture. Adapting the intervention style based on the needs of individual situations is possibly one of the greatest skills a coach can have in order to be successful in top-level sports.

 

Carlos Lago Peñas

 

References:

1 Ekstrand, J. (2013). Keeping your top players on the pitch: the key to football medicine at a professional level. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 47:723–724.

 

2 Donmez, G.; Kudas, S.; Yörübulut, M.; Yildirim, M.; Babayeva, N. and Torgutalp, S. (2018). Evaluation of Muscle Injuries in Professional Football Players: Does Coach Replacement Affect the Injury Rate? Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine.

 

3 Ekstrand, J.; Lundqvist, D.; Lagerbäck, L.; Vouillamoz, M.; Papadimitou, N. and Karlsson, J. (2018). Is there a correlation between coaches´ leadership styles and injuries in elite football teams? A study of 36 elite teams in 17 countries. Br J Sports Med 2018; 52: 527-531.

4 Carless, S.A.; Wearing, A.J. and Mamm, L.A. (1990). A short measure of transformational leadership. J Bus Psychol. 14: 389-405.

RELATED NOTES

Jump as a Fatigue Indicator

The monitoring of neuromuscular fatigue in athletes is very relevant when planning training sessions and competitions.

How to organize training in team sports. The Paco Seirul·lo proposal

Following the proposal made by Professor Seirul·lo, practical proposals and the way of understanding training in team sports must be viewed from their own specific perspective.

Is Milk an Effective Option for Recovery?

Recovery is one of the main processes to improve sports performance. Within the many factors that condition a good recovery, nutrition is one of the main ones.

How does Cold Water used as a Recovery Method Affect Strength and Endurance in Sports Performance?

Recovery between sessions is extremely important for high training loads in professional sports.

Do conditions imposed in training tasks affect the physical response of basketball players?

The evolution of elite sport has meant that players undertake high competitive loads caused by schedules packed with extremely demanding matches and practically no rest periods between them.

Do players run less when their team is in possession of the ball?

The arrival of Johan Cruyff as FC Barcelona’s coach in 1988 caused a revolution in the way the game is understood and footballers are trained.

Analysis of physical performance in basketball, is the traditional average-based approach sufficient to analyse physical demands?

To schedule and prescribe training throughout the season, we need to know the physical demands that occur during competition as accurately as possible, so that exercises can be set that prepare the players to withstand real game situations.

The repetition of most demanding scenarios in team sports.

What if a maximum demand scenario doesn’t only happen once but several times? Straight after asking ourselves the question, we started turning it around in our heads.

Warm-up, post-warm-up, and re-warm-up on explosive actions in team sports

The warm-up plays an important role in exercise by improving the performance and reducing the injury risk.

The effects of a ketogenic diet on athletes

Nutrition plays an essential role for an athletes’ performance and health. One of the nutrients athletes pay more attention to, are carbohydrates.

What is exercise-induced muscle damage?

Exercise-induced muscle damage (EIMD) can have important consequences for the performance of athletes as it is associated with muscle pain and a decrease of the neuromuscular function.

The Effects of Confinement on Athletes

Many countries have had to implement numerous preventive strategies due to the pandemic, and confinement is one of the most notable ones.

Apps to assess and monitor athletic performance

The routine monitoring of training loads and athletes’ fitness is an essential process to ensure an optimal performance progression.

Which exercises work best to prevent muscle injuries in football?

Injuries are a major concern in football. Among all, muscle injuries are the most frequent ones, more than receiving a blow, fractures and joint injuries.

Localized Bioimpedance (L-BIA) to Distinguish and Quantify Muscle Injury Severity

Muscle injuries involve more than 30 % of injuries in professional football players.

The era of consolidating global strategies arrives

The strategy of major sports clubs is to consolidate the global impact they have had in recent years.

Can Preseason Reduce the Risk of Injury?

Preseason goals in elite football are diverse. It is about testing, “measuring forces with other teams” and developing the physical abilities of the players to prepare them in the best way possible for the demands of the season.

COVID-19 WILL ACCELERATE A REFORM IN THE WORLD OF FOOTBALL

There are two clear lessons we have learned from the pandemic: empty stadiums also empty football’s spirit, and leagues cannot be played in a normal condition if there is a permanent threat of disease.

ÁNGEL CAPPA, THE COACH AT THE CENTRE OF FOOTBALL

Cappa’s fundamental premise is to approach football without fear. You cannot coach a team ruled by fear of its rivals.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TEAM LEADERS GIVING CONFIDENCE TO THE TEAM

The success of team leaders has a lot to do with their ability to inspire and empower the team.

HOW CAN PLAYING WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE AFFECT THE MATCH RESULT?

The return of the competition almost three months later includes a change in the regulation that allows a maximum of 5 substitutions per game and a bigger number of players can be called.

DIFFERENCES IN THE MAXIMUM DEMAND SCENARIOS IN FOOTBALL BETWEEN THE FIRST AND THE SECOND HALF

The goal for training is to help players be best prepared for competing.

PLAYER MIGRATION AND THE PERFORMANCE OF ELITE FOOTBALL TEAMS

Globalization –the process driven by the increase in cross-border flows of goods, services, money, people, information and culture1- has dramatically affected western societies and football is not isolated from this phenomenon.

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION IN TEAM SPORTS. PACO SEIRUL·LO’S PROPOSAL

Science has changed training in team sports by modifying many routines and preparations. The quantification of everything which takes place in a training session is one of the goals for the staff.

HAPPINESS VERSUS WELLNESS IN ELITE SPORT

In team sports, coaches make a lot of decisions and some of them have an immediate impact on the efficiency of the game.

PACO SEIRUL·LO’S PROPOSAL FOR TEAM SPORTS TRAINING: STRUCTURED TRAINING, GAME SPACES AND PREFERENTIAL SIMULATION SITUATIONS

In recent years, two training paradigms have revolutionised the way we understand preparation in team sports.

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.

PLAYER ORIENTATION, A KEY ASPECT OF PREDICTIVE MODELS IN FOOTBALL

In the OptaPro Forum this week, Carlos Rodríguez will be presenting a study currently being carried out by the club on the body orientation of players in different game situations. We sat down for a chat with him so that he could give us a brief explanation of the project.

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.” 

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE?

  • SUBSCRIBE
  • CONTACT
  • APPLY

KEEP UP TO DATE WITH OUR NEWS

Do you have any questions about Barça Universitas?

  • Startup
  • Research Center
  • Corporate

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

The Form has been sent successfully.

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

The Form has been sent successfully.

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

PLEASE COMPLETE THE FIELDS:

The Form has been sent successfully.