Performance of adolescents in indoor soccer: relations with anthropometric, motor and practice measures.

Abstract

The aims of this study were (a) to compare youth indoor soccer players of different competitive levels and also first team and reserves of the same competitive levels in anthropometric, motor, total time dedicated to practice and technical performance during real games and (b) to verify the relations between these variables. The sample was composed by 28 indoor soccer players, divided into two teams (n=14) of different competitive level (Sub-13 and Sub-15). It was measured weight, height, skin fold thickness, leg length and indicators of motor skill outside the games, total time dedicated to practice and technical performance during real games. In general, there were significant statistical differences between the teams. However, removing the effects of chronological age, these differences disappear. Comparing only the players of different participation levels in games (first team and reserves), there were also no differences. The relations between the outside game measures and technical performance in game were weak. These results underline the limitations of comparing different competitive levels to uncover the importance of a determined variable and also evidence the difficult of obtaining relevant performance indicators from individualized measures. For future researches the challenge is to elaborate tests with high ecological and internal validity.