Formation of individual competitive styles of football players with regard to their cognitive styles

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E.N. Koskina
Associate professor, Ph.D. N.A. Sklyar
Velikie Luki State Academy of Physical Culture, Velikie Luki

 

Keywords: individual competitive styles (ICS), cognitive styles, junior football players.

Introduction. Formation of individual competitive styles (ICS) is a major obstacle to a athlete’s transition from mass to elite sport and a challenging task for psychological follow-up provided in the advanced training phase in the selected sport.

Ample materials regarding the selection and formation of ICS of athletes are available today [3, 4, 5]. However, there are hardly any published data relevant to its impact on team or individual competitive performance, as the sources merely state that well developed ICS contribute to improvement of efficiency, reliability, and overall performance. No ICS formation recommendations or methods are available for football players in the advanced training phase.

The purpose of the study was to develop and test the psychopedagogical recommendations for the formation of individual competitive styles of football players with regard to their cognitive styles.

Materials and methods. The ascertaining part of the experiment was dedicated to determination of the extremities of cognitive styles characteristic of the football players with certain ICS, namely the constructive style (field independence, reflectivity, cognitive control flexibility), the aggressive style (field dependence, impulsiveness, cognitive control rigidity), and the destructive style (field dependence, cognitive control rigidity, smoothing) [1, 2]. These were employed in the development of psychopedagogical recommendations on improvement of selection and formation of football players’ ICS, implemented in the course of training of junior players (15 – 16 years) at the premises of the youth football school No. 2 of Velikie Luki for the period of 9 months.

Results and discussion. Notwithstanding the fact that the aggressive style ensured the best performance according to the results of the ascertaining part of the research, note should be made that without active participation of creative football players, no aggressive or destructive activities would be of any significant value.

In order to facilitate the football players’ ICS formation, a briefing was initially arranged regarding the issues of performance determinants, ICS notion and its nature, football players’ ICS, and ICS formation necessity and opportunities. Individual discussions of the necessity to form an ICS in order to improve performance were held too.

We further defined the football players’ ICS selection and formation objectives and the means to achieve them:

Group I – creative ICS formation objectives including: 1) improvement of independent decision making skills; 2) skills of detailed analysis of available alternatives in decision making concerning possible development of a game situation; 3) formation of skills to change an elaborated competition program; 4) formation of skills to identify similarities of different game situations and to group their features; 5) development of skills in singling out and memorizing specific details of game situations.

This first objective of creative ICS formation was achieved by: allowing certain independence in training and competitive activities and by making a player personally responsible for a certain part of training or action.

The second objective was achieved through involvement of the players in detailed analysis of game situations; elaboration of a maximum number of alternative solutions to a game situation by the football players with determination and justification of their strengths and weaknesses; and workshops aimed at development of active communication styles and team partnership.

The third objective implied development of combination skills, ingenuity and imagination; development of the players’ capacity to quickly assess different situations and switch between different team actions; creation of ‘impasses’ requiring quick efficient solutions at the training sessions time; improvisation, time and speed limitations.

The fourth objective was achieved by fostering the skills to identify similarities in different game situations.

The fifth objective was implemented through repeated detailed analysis sessions.

Group II – aggressive ICS formation objectives: 1) formation of skills to take into account other team members in decision making; 2) improvement of quick decision making skills; 3) development of skills to quickly switch between different activities in the course of a game; 4) training of football players in identifying differences between game situations and limit application of the a single activity group; 5) development of skills in identifying and memorizing specific details of a game situation.

The identified objectives, in particular the third and fifth ones are similar to those suggested for the creative ICS formation, which contradicts to a certain degree the findings of the summative part of the study. However, literature analysis suggests that footballer of any role or style needs different intellectual properties to succeed, including both logics and improvisation, so we can expect improved performance of aggressive players displaying relevant skills. For this reason, we employed the means similar to those for the creative style formation.

The football players’ skills to pay heed to the team’s opinion were formed by training in efficient communications. With that aim in view, a lecture and several workshops were carried out aimed at improving the awareness of collective responsibility, involvement in team actions, and elaboration of common strategies to achieve success.

The second objective was achieved by implementing the following recommendations: development of skills to act under time pressure and in non-standard situations, formation of resolve and desire to bring any started action to its completion.

For the fourth objective, we recommended to facilitate the development of the ability to identify differences in game situations while analyzing them.

Group III – destructive ICS formation objectives duplicate the aggressive style formation tasks, and the suggested means to achieve them were also similar.

The fourth objective contradicting the ascertaining part of the study is to be justified by the fact that the football players who focus on details display higher individual performance than the ones not paying much attention to them. Therefore the development of detail memorizing skills can be considered indispensable for efficiency improvement.

Results and discussions. Efficiency of employed psychopedagogical recommendations for the ICS selection and formation was tested using the Student’s t-criterion and presented in Table 1. No significant changes were registered in the reference group.

Table 1. Changes in football players' ICS formation level after implementing offered psychopedagogical recommendations (n = 20)





ICS

Prior to experiment

After experiment

Differences

М±m

М±m

p

Constructive

3.6

4.8

≤ 0.05

Destructive

3.95

5.1

≤ 0.05

Aggressive

3.7

5.3

≤ 0.05

Notes: М±m – mean arithmetic, p – difference significance level.

As seen from Table 1, the ICS manifestation of all the players was changed with a high level of significance (р ≤ 0,05) after implementation of the psychopedagogical recommendations. Increase of variance ratios after implementation of the psychopedagogical recommendations suggests a growth of individual football players’ ICS indicators dispersion, which was not evidenced prior to the experiment. Hence, if before the implementation of recommendations the football players had not shown any preference for a particular ICS and used different styles irrespective of their efficiency, rationality or individual characteristics, then employment of cognitive styles in the course of training contributed to more stable use of specific ICS. This is further supported by significant interrelations between the football players’ ICS evaluations by the trainers.

Conclusions. The implementation of the psychopedagogical recommendations for the selection and formation of individual competitive styles of football players has resulted in positive changes manifested in improved stability of using a certain style by the football players.

References

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Corresponding author: kurcanova@mail.ru