The complex systems approach

Complex Systems Approach

Rather than reading indicators one at a time, we treat the relationships between them as the unit of analysis.

What a single indicator cannot show

Factors that each sit within normal range can combine into a dangerous one.

Why football is a complex system

Several factors act at once

A player’s state is set by load, sleep, schedule and injury history acting together.

The same input produces different responses

After the same session, where fatigue shows and how much differs from player to player.

It does not add up in a straight line

The factors affect one another, so adding the individual numbers does not explain the whole.

How we analyse

The whole produces what the parts do not

A single neuron has no consciousness. A brain of countless connected neurons does. The whole cannot be predicted from the properties of the parts.

In football Eleven star players do not make the strongest team. A squad’s strength comes from how the players connect, not from their individual ability.

Nonlinearity

Small changes make large differences

A slight change in sea temperature can alter weather across the planet. Input and output are not proportional: past a threshold, the whole system starts behaving differently.

In football Small amounts of daily fatigue accumulate and then surface, one day, as an injury. Moving one player can change how the whole team functions.

More is different.

P. W. Anderson, physicist and Nobel laureate, 1972 — the paper that set complex systems science going

If you avoid complexity, you cannot improve anything.

Francisco Seirul·lo, former physical coach, FC Barcelona

This view is not ours to claim

Reading football as a complex system is an established direction in sport science research and at the top of the game.

Ecological Dynamics

A framework that does not separate the player from the environment, taking the interaction between them as the unit for skill acquisition and tactical behaviour. It has become a mainstream influence on training design.¹

Research on emergent pattern formation

Work that treats a team as a superorganism, quantifying the collective structure that emerges from synchronisation and coordination between players using network and dynamical-systems methods.²

Positional play

Modern tactics have moved from placing individuals to designing relationships. Positional and numerical advantage only exist in relation to team-mates and opponents.

1. Ecological Dynamics, a framework for motor learning and skill acquisition developed by K. Davids, D. Araújo and others.

2. For example Duarte, R. et al. (2012) “Sports teams as superorganisms”, among a wider body of work on collective behaviour in team sports.

Bring this approach to your club.

Data Analysis & Advisory

For clubs that already have data. We analyse what you hold with the complex systems approach and return findings you can act on.

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Data Platform

For clubs that want to start with how records are kept. We bring scattered data together and make the analysis part of the daily routine.