Complexity in Team Sports

Complexity in Team Sports

Managing in Complexity

Individual Paper

By-  

Srikrishnan Shivakumar (B00688485)

Introduction: The stem of the word complexity i.e. Complex is composed of the Latin words ‘com’ (meaning: "together") and ‘plex’ (meaning: woven). A complex system is thereby characterized by its inter-dependencies. Complexity, simply put, is a measure of the number of possibilities or chances. From a sports’ perspective, an effective defense has to meet the possible selections of the offense. As a consequence, the number of possible ways a player or team can create an offense is important. If a player or team has a more diverse set of offensive plays, the other side may not be able to defend against each play. The plays that it cannot defend against can be exploited. In Football, Basketball or Hockey, this applies for two individuals playing one-on-one and for two teams playing against each other in a game or match. The concepts of emergence, self-organization, adaptations, network etc. will illustrate the link between them & team sports in this paper.  

Evolution: Complexity generally involves 'systems' made up of many interacting constituents. These constituents may be referred to as a 'system'. A city, a sector, a team, an industry an economy or the rail network are examples of systems. The components of system can comprise/ include people, organizations such as businesses and government, or the physical environment. A system becomes complex, rather than complicated, when there are many interactions between the different components in the system, and perhaps there are many different types of components. For example, consider a basketball or a football team where you have a system i.e. the team and you have different components i.e. the players. These interactions, and the influences they have, make the system difficult to understand, make prediction difficult, and make the system i.e. the team exhibit certain behaviors such as tipping points. Complexity Science has rapidly advanced over the last 50 years or so, to help us analyze and apprehend complex systems. To help us get a stronger grasp on what Complexity Science is, and what it has achieved, we explore some key concepts below with respect to the team sports.  

Complex systems in sports: Complex systems perceived in sports (Football, Basketball, Volleyball, Hockey etc.) comprise of functionally & structurally heterogeneous constituents that engage with varying intensities and encompassing different spatio-temporal levels. They are also adaptive, connected and goal oriented, changing and fitting their behavior to emerging obstacles. This characteristic increases exponentially their level of complexity and provides a huge challenge for modeling techniques. In such systems, advanced forms of behavior emerge incessantly under changing constraints, without being previously outlined. This is a major feature or characteristic of sports-related phenomena. Complex systems may behave in a simple way because their engaging constituents may form huge coalitions of cooperative elements which reduce the dimensionality of the behavior (for example: the coherent behavior of a football or hockey team in a stadium or movement/gameplay synergies). Thus, a complex system achieves simple behavior and may be viewed as a simple system on a macroscopic stage. Otherwise, the system has a very complex and unpredictable outcome (For example: the movements & positioning of a rower during team water rafting). Complexity sciences offer concepts and equipment which make it possible to treat complex systems, such as those previously mentioned, in a relatively simple fashion. A better insight into sport related outcome and new opportunities for the development of theory, practice, experiment and research of sport and complex structure will follow.

Network systems: Networks are powerful tools for analyzing about how constituents of a system are interlinked or connected. One may be familiar with network diagrams & charts - called 'graphs' - with dots joined by lines. These network diagrams are made up of 'nodes' and 'edges'. The nodes represent the constituents of a system; this may be players, in this particular context. The edges are the connections between them. These connections could represent anything from an anticipation, to a link, to an understanding. It is challenging to define coordination not only at the level of coordinating neural systems, muscles, and actions but also at the level of interactions/ coordination between psychological and physiological activity in players during gameplay. The positioning of each player depends invariably on the positioning of others which creates an interdependent network that co-ordinates & functions as a whole. This direction of work in coordination dynamics aims at unraveling how cognition, and physiological processes, reconfigure and transit spontaneously under changing conditions imposed by influence from both ends in sports settings. While it is interesting to understand the structural rearrangements within the pitch or ground during learning and performing, but at the moment and the foreseeable future it seems more or less impossible to elegantly & conceptually capture all those levels up to the macroscopic level actions, especially when performed in stochastically changing environments.

Adaptation: Adaptation generally refers to a system's capability to adapt or react to changes in its condition or environment, arising from both internal influences, and external interventions. Feedback loops (in which one effect has an effect on its cause) are most likely to be an important feature in enabling a system's adaptation. Adaptation is a key concept in Complexity. It is a system's adaptation to an intervention that can cause often cited 'unintended consequences'. For example:  Italy’s defeat against Costa Rica on June 2014 was a clear example of how complex dynamics & adaptation are at play, making predictions difficult. The Italians were caught offside 11 times, which is a clear evidence of their failure to adjust and adapt. Adaptability is required because an important strategic feature of football or any team sport for that matter is to optimize space when attacking and defending.

Players must adapt their positions and movements on the field not only based on where the opponents are and how and where they are moving, but also in relation to their own team players.  It’s like herding sheep. In the 1970’s, “total football” further broke players’ spatial barriers by enabling them to assume different roles on the field. In Total Football, a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another from his team, thus retaining the team's intended organizational structure. In this fluid system, no outfield player is fixed in a predetermined role; anyone can successively play as an attacker, a midfielder and a defender. The only player who must stay in a specified position is the goalkeeper.  Johan Cruyff, winner of the Ballon d’Or in 1971, 1973 and 1974, used to direct his teammates in real time while himself on the field. It is the ability to adapt to the opponents’ tactics, and complex interactions between players on the field, that, in the end, makes a difference in a team sport.