Actions with the Ball that Determine the Effectiveness of Play in Women's Football

Various actions with the ball performed by players during football matches encourage continuous research on game observation to be carried out. It is of special significance in providing information about players and their contribution to the effort of the whole team. Both quantitative and qualitative records enable transformation of the information obtained into data supporting training tasks. In the opinion of the authors, the determination of a winning team is affected to the greatest extent by qualitative factors in the form of coefficients of accuracy and efficiency of particular actions with the ball. A hypothesis was advanced in the study that in women's football there are ball actions whose quality of execution affects winning a match, and that there exists a specific ranking of their significance. Analyses were conducted for nearly 18,000 actions performed with the ball by 130 players, competitors in the European Women's Football Championship in 2005. Statistical tests applied in the study enabled differences between teams of winners and losers to be defined, whereas the analysis of a discriminant function indicated which qualitative factors were the most significant and had the greatest impact on winning a match. A specific hierarchy of the significance of those activities was also elaborated in the study. The most significant activities that affected the victory were: 1×1 play in defense, 1×1 play in offense, accuracy of passes and effective execution of dead-ball situations.