Fast Attack Starts, in Soccer. Analysis of Real Madrid

Published online: June 25, 2014IntroductionSoccer is a modality of complex understanding and strongly influenced by randomness; this preconception comes from the multiple factors that involve the game, as: players of the same team and opponents (Lago et al., 2011), the influence of match location, (Lago, 2009) result, condition of pitch (Fradua, Zubillaga & Caro, 2012), psychic state of players (Lago, 2007), among many other aspects that articulate promoting the growth of randomness.The increasing research on this game was consolidated, above all, in the realization of studies oriented to the description and explanation of physical and/or physiological or quantification of actions performed, an attempt to quantify the activity of footballers (Sanches, Casal & Brandao, 2004, June; Gregson, Drust, Atkinson & Di Salvo, 2010; Lago-Ballesteros & Lago-Penas, 2010). Traditional approaches to the quantification of team sports have proved to be limited in their ability to identify complex structural regularities that, despite being unobservable, nonetheless underlie the development of the sporting contest between opposing teams (Camerino, Chaverri, Anguera & Jonsson, 2012).From this statistical practice comes the performance result, therefore they are indicators, unable to determine the performance regarding technical-tactical aspects. The result doesn't have the capacity to identify areas that influence, the much desired question: can we improve the player's behavior? With these types of studies, we verified the search for partial elements to explain the complex and integrative phenomenology that characterizes the game.The final product is valued, however, less significant and more unnoticed is the path taken, the process which allows achieving the desired result. Magnusson (2005) considers that quantification is not enough, and that it should be recognized the structure of this behavior, expressed through patterns that are apparently hidden to the eyes of the observer, but that does exist and it can be detected.It should be noted, however, that the analysis of behavior structures is not being proposed as a substitute for conventional approaches in sports research. Coaches should have as main concern how to collect game information and realize how is it possible to intervene in the processes of teaching-learning and training, becoming more effective/efficient supervising the process applied to the players. The enormous amount of factors that condition the football game, affect deeply its accuracy, without implementation of proper scientific means, the development is dependent on random factors.Soccer consists of the sum of technical elements with and without the ball that, at all times, should serve a higher purpose which is the tactical element, the collective ideology that should be recognized by the several players of the same team and promote an individual and collective response. The focus is to provide the players with knowledge that enable them to understand a set of guidance standards. The referred guidance allows achieving solutions for the problems that emerge from game diversity.Given the need to analyze the game, some researchers have resorted to notational analysis. It represents a significant advance as observational methodology, and demands fulfillment of the requirements of the scientific method along the process. This methodology applied to football context provides unbiased and necessary information for coaches, to promote more adequate processes in the game context. Sequence analysis, has been presented as a model that supplies relevance and innovation, helping to achieve better relations, collective and individual behaviors, in particular in football as revealed by the work of Barbosa (2013), Camerino, et. al (2012), Sarmento (2012) among others.The observational methodology provides a quantitative but also a qualitative analysis and ultimately helps define the type of behavior in the game context. …