Supervisors info:
Μητροτάσιος Μ., Λέκτορας, ΣΕΦΑΑ, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
This research was about to analyze the technical and tactical actions in offensive third of the field in World Cup 2018, to control the effectiveness of players in the attacking zone and provide helpful material to coaching staff.
For this purpose, the tactical and technical actions at the final third of England and Belgium, that occurred in the World Cup 2018 have been recorded and analyzed. 7 matches have been analyzed, from the knock-out and then. The observation of the games has been made with videos, that were provided from the online platform Wyscout and the recording was made through the program of Microsoft Excel. Χ2-test and (ANΟVΑ) were used to compare the frequency distribution of two teams, with importance level set to p<.10. The main variables that have been analyzed were the entry’s time at the offensive zone, the way that attack started, the type of attack, the kind of finishing, and the result of the attack.
The outcomes showed that Belgium had more entries in the offensive third in the first half 54.67%, while England had a slightly higher frequency of entries in the second half 50.75%. The recoveries from open play were the most dominant way of recovering possession of the ball for Belgium 61.33%, and for England 44.78%. The direct attacks were the most common type of attack with 47.76% for England and with 40.00% for Belgium. The finishes from open play were more than the finishes from set plays for both England 54.55% and Belgium 71.74%. Most of the attacks led to possession lost, both for England at 44.78% and Belgium at 41.33% when the percentage of goals reached 9.33% for Belgium and 5.97% for England.
To sum up, coaches should create realistic training sessions under the pressure of time, space, and opponent to improve both players and team performance.
