Understanding player transitions in football through distributed situation awareness

Player transitions in football are critical for talent development and involve players transitioning to more experienced squads. While transitions provide many positive developmental opportunities for players, the increase in workload, demands, and pressures can potentially cause injury or wellbeing issues. Despite this, they remain an under-investigated area in football and there is limited knowledge on how best the transition process can be managed to prevent adverse outcomes. The aim of this study was to develop a network-based model of player transitions between squads within a professional English football club, through the lens of Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA). The Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork (EAST) framework was applied to describe and understand the interaction between transition tasks, performance staff, and required information during player transitions. Group model building, and semi-structured interviews with club performance staff were used to develop the EAST analyses. The findings demonstrate the complexity of player transitions, through the interaction of numerous tasks, performance staff, and required information sharing. Negative transition outcomes may result from failures in DSA during fast-paced, reactive situations where information sharing and error recovery are limited. Further, heavy reliance on key individuals, as well as limited involvement of the first team coaches in the transition process may be associated with potentially negative outcomes. The current findings will guide clubs in developing processes to reduce transition-related injuries and wellbeing issues and to increase positive outcomes for players and clubs.