Technical and tactical performance indicators discriminating winning and losing team in elite Asian beach soccer...

The present study aims to identify the essential technical and tactical performance indicators that could differentiate winning and losing performance in the Asian elite beach soccer competition. A set of 20 technical and tactical performance indicators namely; shot back-third, shot mid-third, shot front-third, pass back-third, pass mid-third, pass front-third, shot in box, shot outbox, chances created, interception, turnover, goals scored 1st period, goals scored 2nd period, goals scored 3rd period, goals scored extra time, tackling, fouls committed, complete save, incomplete save and passing error were observed during the beach soccer Asian Football Confederation tournament 2017 held in Malaysia. A total of 23 matches from 12 teams were notated using StatWatch application in real-time. Discriminant analysis (DA) of standard, backward as well stepwise modes were used to develop a model for the winning (WT) and losing team (LT) whilst Mann-Whitney U test was utilized to ascertain the differences between the WT and LT with respect to the performance indicators evaluated. The standard backward, forward and stepwise discriminates the WT and the LT with an excellent accuracy of 95.65%, 91.30% and 89.13%, respectively. The standard DA model discriminated the teams from seven performance indicators whilst both the backward and forward stepwise identified two performance indicators. The Mann-Whitney U test analysis indicated that the WT is statistically significant from the LT based on the performance indicators determined from the standard mode model of the DA. It was demonstrated that seven performance indicators namely; shot front-third, pass front-third, chances created, goals scores at the 1st period, goals scored at the 2nd period, goals scored at 3rd period were directly linked to a successful performance whilst the incomplete save by the keeper attribute towards the poor performance of the team. The present finding could serve useful to the coaches as well as performance analysts as a measure of profiling successful performance and enables team improvement with respect to the associated performance indicators.