Self-organization processes in field-invasion team sports

PASSOS, Pedro, ARAÚJO, Duarte and DAVIDS, Keith (2013). Self-organization processes in field-invasion team sports. Sports Medicine, 43 (1), 1-7.

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Abstract

In nature, the interactions between agents in a complex system (fish schools; colonies of ants) are governed by information that is locally created. Each agent self-organizes (adjusts) its behaviour, not through a central command centre, but based on variables that emerge from the interactions with other system agents in the neighbourhood. Self-organization has been proposed as a mechanism to explain the tendencies for individual performers to interact with each other in field-invasion sports teams, displaying functional co-adaptive behaviours, without the need for central control. The relevance of self-organization as a mechanism that explains pattern-forming dynamics within attacker-defender interactions in field-invasion sports has been sustained in the literature. Nonetheless, other levels of interpersonal coordination, such as intra-team interactions, still raise important questions, particularly with reference to the role of leadership or match strategies that have been prescribed in advance by a coach. The existence of key properties of complex systems, such as system degeneracy, nonlinearity or contextual dependency, suggests that self-organization is a functional mechanism to explain the emergence of interpersonal coordination tendencies within intra-team interactions. In this opinion article we propose how leadership may act as a key constraint on the emergent, self-organizational tendencies of performers in field-invasion sports.

Item Type:	Article
Research Institute, Centre or Group - Does NOT include content added after October 2018:	Centre for Sports Engineering Research
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-012-0001-1
Page Range:	1-7
Depositing User:	Carole Harris
Date Deposited:	01 Oct 2013 13:34
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2021 19:45
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7341

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