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Investigative Trends in Understanding Penalty-Kick Performance in Association Football: An Ecological Dynamics Perspective

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Abstract

There have been different approaches to studying penalty-kick performance in association football and in this paper we synthesize key findings within an ecological dynamics theoretical framework. According to this theoretical perspective, information is the cornerstone for understanding the dynamics of action regulation in penalty-kick performance. Research suggests that investigators need to identify the information sources that are most relevant to penalty-kick performance. An important task is to understand how constraints can channel (i.e. change, emphasize or mask) information sources used to regulate upcoming actions and how the influence of these constraints is expressed in players’ behavioural dynamics. Due to the broad range of constraints influencing penalty-kick performance, it is recommended that future research adopts an interdisciplinary focus on performance assessment to overcome the current lack of representativeness in penalty-kick experimental designs. Such an approach would serve to capture the information-based control of action of both players as components of this dyadic system in competitive sport.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/60520/2009), awarded to the first author. All authors have no relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SpertLab, Laboratório de Perícia no Desporto, CIPER, Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Universidade de Lisboa, Estrada da Costa, 1495-688, Cruz Quebrada-Dafundo, Portugal

    José E. Lopes & Duarte Araújo

  2. Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University, South Yorkshire, UK

    Keith Davids

  3. School of Exercise and Nutrition Science, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

    Keith Davids

Authors
  1. José E. Lopes
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  2. Duarte Araújo
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  3. Keith Davids
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Correspondence to José E. Lopes.

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Lopes, J.E., Araújo, D. & Davids, K. Investigative Trends in Understanding Penalty-Kick Performance in Association Football: An Ecological Dynamics Perspective. Sports Med 44, 1–7 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-013-0101-6

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