Defensive performance indicators in a high-level Spanish football team

Studies on football have gone from analysing technical and physiological aspects and assessing individual and collective behavioural elements to evaluating contextual variables that affect the development of the game. The objective of this study was to identify the strategic use of some technical variables to explain the defensive behaviour of the team or the players (as a group or individually) through the duels and recoveries that occur during the game. A team at the highest level of the first division of Spanish football (La Liga or Santander League) was studied throughout the 38 matches of the 2017/18 season. Principal component analysis was used to better identify the variables of the most important components that have the greatest influence on the two principal components. The results allow the defensive profile to be defined from a large number of official matches played by the same team. Variations in this game parameter depending on whether the match is played at home or away and the roles that are usually attributed to each player for each area of the field or each player’s technical characteristics are thus detected. Establishing performance profiles based on technical indicators using principal component analysis could be used to understand the individual and/or group performance of the team and thus manage the optimisation in competition of both the team itself and opponent teams.