Soccer is evolving with higher passing rates and faster ball speed, a UNSW expert has shown.
If the experience of watching a FIFA World Cup soccer final is intense, spare a thought for the players, who are competing at an ever increasing intensity, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport.
Professor Kevin Norton from the School of Health Sciences at UNSW Sydney analysed broadcast footage of 12 FIFA World Cup finals – 2014-2022 for men and 1991-2023 for women – to assess trends in the game.
Prof. Norton reviewed historical video footage with the support of computer-based tracking technology to track and quantify patterns, using what is called a retrospective correlation design. The study built on Prof. Norton’s previous analysis of men’s World Cup soccer finals games from 1966-2010, so ultimately took in the broadcast footage of 15 men’s FIFA World Cup finals (1966-2022) and 9 women’s finals (1991-2023) to quantify changes over time in specific metrics of finals games.
“The study confirms what football fans are likely to have observed, and that is that football is evolving for both the men’s and women’s game,” says Prof. Norton.
“You can see that successful approaches stick around and unsuccessful attributes tend to disappear,” says Prof. Norton, who is an expert in the evolution of elite sports performance.
“Looking at the World Cup finals was a way to see what is bringing the most success in terms of the evolution of soccer. And both the men’s and women’s game are on a similar trajectory, at a very similar rate,” he says.
