Technical-Tactical Analysis of the Players of the Left and Right Wing in Elite Soccer

Abstract

In today's soccer, teams are increasingly better trained both physically and tactically, hence different game styles can be identified and differences between them reduced. However, without an exhaustive analysis of reality, the view can lead to the extraction of erroneous conclusions, and what seems to be a team with a marked offensive profile is a mere illusion, resulting to be a team that develops a perfectly balanced game. In this paper, an analysis of technical-tactical performance of players who occupied both wings in an elite team was made, taking as reference the Spanish national soccer team as the model of international game to imitate in the last decade. The development of this paper was located within the observational methodology, using the polar coordinates technique for the analysis of the obtained data. The results showed how, despite identifying offensive profiles within technical-tactical performance of players that occupied the outer wings or lanes of the playing field, their tactical means and orientations diverged from each other. The results showed a more offensive profile and with higher technical complexity of players that occupied the left wing, while players that held the right wing showed a more defensive and recuperative profile, indicating a less vertical and complex style of play at a technical level with the forward as an offensive reference.