Seeing bad luck: player participation to tactical video analysis in amateur football

Abstract

This paper focuses on the skills involved in gaining insight from visual evidence in tactical video analysis. Using multi- modal analysis of video recordings of tactical video analysis in a case from amateur football, our findings re-specify exist- ing scholarship into video-based coaching by giving content to the idea of seeing as a scaffold for player engagement. We identify four methods in which participants use video data in interaction: the first involves using still images to give a label to the episode; the second is about making apparent what is seen on video through bodily re-enactment; the third entails zooming out from specific aspects of play to consider a larger spatial configuration while the fourth consists in considering the event within the extended temporal development of the action. Contrary to accounts of video-sessions whereby talk is dominated by the coach, the polyphony of voices and multi- ple ways of seeing captured by these methods concur to suggest a view of tactical video analysis as a complex social system of which the coach is but one member.