Journal of Sports Sciences
ISSN: 0264-0414 (Print) 1466-447X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjsp20
Contemporary perspectives on talent identification and development in soccer A. Mark Williams & Barry Drust To cite this article: A. Mark Williams & Barry Drust (2012) Contemporary perspectives on talent identification and development in soccer, Journal of Sports Sciences, 30:15, 1571-1572, DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2012.737109 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2012.737109
Published online: 21 Nov 2012.
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Date: 28 July 2016, At: 21:20
Journal of Sports Sciences, November 2012; 30(15): 1571–1572
EDITORIAL
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Contemporary perspectives on talent identification and development in soccer
This issue of the Journal of Sports Sciences focuses on the science underpinning talent identification and development in soccer. The journal has a long history of publishing research around these areas, as illustrated by the publication of a previous special issue on the same theme in September 2000 edited by A. Mark Williams and Thomas Reilly. The latter special issue proved very popular with three of the articles published being listed in the top 20 most cited papers ever in the journal and five papers in the top 100 most cited papers. This achievement is impressive given that more than a thousand papers have been published in the journal since September 2000. The success of this initial special issue highlights the continued interest and growth in application of scientific principles from the various disciplines of sports science specifically to soccer. The focus in this current issue is on how science can help those involved in the identification and development of elite players. This somewhat narrow focus on the development of elite soccer players is not intended to undermine the significant role that the sport can play in facilitating health, well-being and engagement in physical activity. This latter role is important, but beyond the scope of this special issue. In keeping with the approach adopted in the previous special issue on this theme in 2000, a multidisciplinary perspective is adopted to talent identification and development in soccer in the current edition of the journal. Several sports science discipline areas are represented with specific papers focusing on anthropology, pedagogy, physiology, psychology, sociology and coaching science. The opening paper by Wrigley and co-authors attempts to quantify the physiological training load experienced by elite junior soccer players in the UK during a competitive season. The approach presents a potentially valuable method to quantify training load that may in future provide rich information on training volume and intensity in male and female players across various age and skill levels. The increasing physiological load imposed on players during practice and competition is further highlighted by ISSN 0264-0414 print/ISSN 1466-447X online Ă“ 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2012.737109
Elferink-Gemser and colleagues using a large sample of elite players from The Netherlands. These authors highlight how the intermittent endurance capacity of players has changed markedly over a 10-year period since the turn of the millennium. The authors discuss how the increasing demands of the game should be considered when attempting to identify and develop future generations of elite soccer players. A number of papers in the special issue involve a sociological and/or psychological approach to talent identification and development. Mills, Butt, Maynard and Harwood employ a qualitative approach to identify some of the crucial factors that influence how soccer players progress through the system to professional level. The importance of various psychological characteristics such as awareness and resilience are highlighted, as well as sociological factors such as support structures and mentors in fostering the effective development of elite soccer players. A similar qualitative approach is adopted by Richardson, Littlewood, Nesti and Benstead who examine the experiences of elite young players during the migration process from one country to another. These authors highlight the significant challenges involved during migration and the importance of providing strong social support networks and specialist input from qualified practitioners such as sport psychologists and education and welfare officers. Similarly, Balaguer and colleagues focus on the importance of support staff, with a particular focus on how the interpersonal style employed by coaches predicts the level of satisfaction, vitality and burnout in players over the course of a season. They highlight how coaches can negatively influence psychological need satisfaction in players through overuse of a controlling coach-created environment. The importance of high quality coaching in fostering a rich and vibrant learning environment is highlighted by Cushion, Ford and Williams. These authors discuss how coach behaviours influence the manner in which players learn and illustrate through research and theory from the field of motor learning
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how best to design practice sessions and provide instruction to facilitate skill acquisition. Implications for research and coach education are highlighted. A traditional experimental approach is used by Roca, Williams and Ford to examine whether differences exist in the developmental history profiles of those who are high- or low-performing on established laboratory-based measures of anticipation and decision making. The hours accumulated during childhood in soccer-specific play activity was the strongest predictor of performance on the test of anticipation and decision making, with hours accumulated in soccer-specific practice during adolescence making a smaller yet still meaningful contribution. The importance of soccer-specific play activity in the development of elite youth players is similarly highlighted by Ford and colleagues who examine retrospectively using a questionnaire approach the practice history profiles of players from Europe, North Africa, Central America and South America. In these two papers, the authors highlight the importance of early and protracted engagement in the right type and amount of soccer-specific play and practice on the long-journey through childhood to senior adult players. Limited evidence is presented to support engagement in a diverse range of sports during development. In the next paper, Helsen and colleagues consider another pervasive phenomenon in professional soccer, namely the relative age affect or the asymmetry in birth distribution favouring players born early rather than later in the selection year. These authors present data to illustrate that the effect remains as pervasive as ever despite more than a decade of research. They conclude with some suggestions as to how its negative impact may be alleviated in future. In the final batch of papers in this edition, a multidisciplinary approach to talent identification is adopted with data presented from numerous countries and research groups. Gonaus and Mu¨ller attempt to use physiological data to predict the likelihood that elite adolescent soccer players in Austria will progress to professional status later in adulthood. A number of physiological and performance measures are recorded using a novel, longitudinal design in an effort to determine their predictive utility for the purpose of talent identification. The authors conclude that some of the measures employed can be used to help ascertain the likelihood of adolescent players progressing to higher levels of the sport later in development, highlighting their value for the purpose of talent identification. A multi-disciplinary data set is presented by Carling, Le Gall and Malina using an elite sample of youth soccer players. These authors
examine differences in body size, skeletal maturity and functional characteristics on separate samples of players on entry to an elite academy in France in 1992 and 2003, respectively. No differences were reported on any of the measures across the two time periods, as a function of playing position or whether or not players eventually progressed to professional status. The authors conclude that the lack of differences may reflect the consistent use of selection criteria by coaches and scouts in France over this time period. In the next paper by Vandendriessche and colleagues, the authors examine changes in biological maturity, morphology, fitness and motor coordination in elite, international youth soccer players in Belgium. The authors report that early maturing players differed in the scores recorded by their less mature counterparts on many of the measures recorded. The need to embrace multidisciplinary approaches to talent identification and to include measures of biological maturity in attempting to interpret any performance measures that may be employed for player evaluation and selection are highlighted. Next, Malina and colleagues reiterate the importance of accurately classifying players based on biological maturity during training and competition. They examine the interrelationship between invasive and non-invasive measures of biological maturity and highlight the difficulties and dangers involved in relying exclusively on non-invasive indicators of maturity status. The special issue concludes with a multi-disciplinary review of contemporary research around this theme by Unnithan and colleagues. The authors advocate a need for more holistic approaches that include measures taken during small-sided games as markers of talent identification. We would like to acknowledge the untimely passing of the co-editor of the previous special issue on this theme in the journal. Professor Thomas Reilly lost his brave fight with cancer in June 2009. His contribution to this area of study was immense, as acknowledged by the fact that he is cited in the majority of papers in this special issue of the journal. His influence continues to grow through the continued contributions to this field made by those he inspired over the years. A. Mark Williams Centre for Sports Medicine and Human Performance, Brunel University, London, UK Barry Drust Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Science, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK