Defensive organisation disruption for team sucess

Football can be considered a simple game between two teams of 11 players, each with the task of putting the ball in the opposing team’s goal. As ball possession changes constantly, the game can often look rather chaotic. However, as students of the game, we know better. Within this chaos, patterns derive from creative interactions of players or sequences of actions learned during hours of training sessions instructed by the coaching staff. These patterns are described in the community as tactics or tactical behaviour. Tactical expertise and the ability to teach tactical behaviour is, rightfully, seen as the key expertise of coaches (Brink, Kuyvenhoven, & Toering, 2018) with some of them labelled as ‘tactical wizards’. The task of the supporting staff is to help these wizards fine-tune their tactical approach and select the best fitting players. To do so, it is important to understand and quantify tactical behaviour. Therefore, the interaction and organisation of the players within a team and subunits of oneteam should be considered in relation to the opponent. (Gréhaigne, Bouthier, & David, 1997)