Match Performance of Soccer Teams in the Chinese Super League-Effects of Situational and Environmental Factors

Abstract

To investigate the effects of situational factors (match location, strength of team and opponent) and environmental factors (relative air humidity, temperature and air quality index) on the technical and physical match performance of Chinese Soccer Super League teams (CSL). The generalized mixed modelling was employed to determine the effects by using the data of all 240 matches in the season 2015 collected by Amisco Pro^®. Increase in the rank difference would increase the number of goal-scoring related, passing and organizing related actions to a small-to-moderate extent (Effect size [ES]: 0.37-0.99). Match location had small positive effects on goal-scoring related, passing and organizing related variables (ES: 0.27-0.51), while a small negative effect on yellow card (ES = -0.35). Increment in relative air humidity and air quality index would only bring trivial or small effects on all the technical performance (ES: -0.06-0.23). Increase in humidity would decrease the physical performance at a small magnitude (ES: -0.55--0.38). Teams achieved the highest number in the physical performance-related parameters at the temperature between 11.6 and 15.1 °C. In the CSL, situational variables had major effects on the technical performance but trivial effects on the physical performance, on the contrary, environmental factors affected mainly the physical performance but had only trivial or small impact on the technical performance.

Keywords: contextual variable; match performance; notational analysis; soccer.

Figure 1

Effects of situational variables on the technical and physical performance of Chinese Soccer Super League (CSL) teams. Effects of team and opponent strength are shown as the effect of an increase of two standard deviations in the value of difference in the log of ranks on the difference of each performance-related parameter. Effects of match location are shown as the effect of playing at home vs. playing away on the difference of each performance-related parameter. Bars are 90% confidence intervals. Dotted lines represent the smallest worthwhile difference. Asterisks indicate the likelihood for the magnitude of the true effect as follows: * possible; ** likely; *** very likely; **** most likely. Asterisks located in the trivial region denote likelihood of trivial effects.

Figure 2

Effects of humidity and AQI (Air quality index) on the technical and physical performance of CSL teams. Effects are shown as the effect of an increase of two standard deviations in the value of humidity and AQI on the difference of each performance-related parameter. Dotted lines represent the smallest worthwhile difference. Asterisks indicate the likelihood for the magnitude of the true effect as follows: * possible; ** likely; *** very likely; **** most likely. Asterisks located in the trivial region denote likelihood of trivial effects.