A comprehensive bibliometric analysis of small-sided games in soccer: 20 years (2003–2023) of scientific exploration

Introduction. Soccer as a sport has undergone thorough examination across various fields of knowledge. Notably, the exploration of small-sided games has emerged as a prominent and captivating subject of study, garnering increased attention in contemporary scientific discourse. Objective. The aim of this study was to conduct a bibliometric study on the scientific output pertaining to small-sided games in soccer from 2003 to 2023. This examination was carried out by evaluating the comprehensive dataset available in the Scopus database. Methodology. The descriptive bibliometric analysis of scientific production considered various key indicators for each document, encompassing: 1) database source; 2) document type; 3) publication year; 4) author names; 5) knowledge domain; 6) journal names; 7) journal country; 8) publication count; 9) quartile ranking; 10) Index; 11) SCI index; 12) citations; 13) average citations per article; 14) documents per institutional affiliation; 15) documents per country/territory; and 16) document count per language. To perform this comprehensive analysis, MeSH terms such as "Soccer" and "Small sided games" were employed in the search utilizing the query ("Small AND Sided AND Games AND Soccer"). The search yielded a total of 714 documents. Employing the VOSviewer program, co-occurrence maps were generated to visualize keyword relationship and co-authorship-patterns within the dataset. Results. The findings indicate that the predominant form of output is research articles (91.0%), followed by review articles (5.7%). Examining the publication timeline revealed a consistent upward trend in scientific output since 2011 peaking in 2022 with 196 documents. Leading contributors to this body of work include Clemente, F.M. (10.084%), Praca. G.M. (5.462%) and Goncalves, B. (4.902%). In terms of subject areas, the majority of production is concentrated in Medicine (73.94%) and Health Professions (69.88%). Key journals driving publication and impact include the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (64 papers, 3374 citations), Journal of Human Kinetics (37 papers, 1066 citations), and the Journal of Sports Sciences (34 papers, 2795 citations). These journals fall within the QI quartile in terms of citations. The Centro de Investigacao em Desporto, Saude e Desenvolvimento Humano emerged as the leading institution contributing 10.92% of the research with an impressive 78 papers. Notably, English overwhelmingly dominates the language landsc