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~interesting stuff... ~
The average distance covered by players in matches has changed little in the last four seasons but the amount done at top speed has almost doubled. What ProZone class as ?igh-intensity activities? ? runs made by players at three-quarters of sprint pace or faster ? have increased from 627 per team per match in 2002-03 to 1,209 in 2005-06, and the ground covered by players while sprinting has increased by 40% over four years. A sprint is classed as a run made at quicker than seven metres per second, equivalent to running 100m in a sharp 14 seconds.
The old coaching instruction, ?et the ball do the work?, may no longer be relevant. It is impossible to be a top player without hard labour. Compared with an England icon of just a few years ago, Alan Shearer, footballers such as Gerrard will cover three times the distance in a match at sprint pace. An analysis of a Gerrard performance against Arsenal last May showed the Liverpool player running 11.79km (seven miles, 573 yards for those who prefer things in old money) per game, with 1,070m of this at ?igh-intensity? pace. ProZone are yet to release individual data from 2005-06 but say Gerrard has further quickened since then.
Speed can be the enemy of subtlety, but not here. Not only is English football becoming more physically intense but the stats suggest it is also growing in sophistication. ProZone measure something called ?inal-third entries? ? the number of times the ball is played or dribbled into the attacking third of the field ? and discovered last season, although the game continued to become faster and there were more passes, that ?inal-third entries? dropped but without significant change in the number of goals and shots. This suggests more cat-and-mouse football is being played, with teams keeping the ball patiently in midfield before launching more sudden, selective and successful attacking strikes.
?ur analysis indicates an interesting trend as it shows that while the game is getting quicker, teams appear to be more probing and patient,? said ProZone? Barry McNeill. ?t appears that teams attack either with pace and purpose or following a prolonged period spent testing the opposition? defence. The tactical approach of absorbing pressure and counter-attacking, increasingly popular in the modern game, has undoubtedly affected both the total distance covered in terms of a team? defensive workrate, and the high-intensity workrate when attacking.?
In 2005-06, midfielders were measured as the Premiership? hardest-working players, with right midfielders, such as Gerrard, the most energetic of all. The average ground covered by those in this position, 11.49km per game (seven miles, 246 yards) was not too far short of the figures for Gerrard. Centre-backs did the least running but even they averaged a fraction under 10km per match. Right midfielders also did the most fast running, an average of 147 heart-thumping ?igh intensity? bursts per match and covering 310m flat out. |
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Post time 21-5-2006 11:46 PM
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