ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the cardinal approaches to analysing performance in team sports and challenges a number of prevailing attitudes, relating to: (a) performance as reactive behaviour following interactions with teammates and opponents; (b) competitive play as instrumentally aimed behaviour; (c) performance analysis as a cybernetic system intending to provide feedback to the ‘coach-player-team’ units; (d) playing performance ‘as is’ without consideration of internal and external (environmental) contexts; and (e) a sports team as a playing domain without viewing it as a managed unit within the entire sports institution hierarchy. Review of research reports together with author perceptions on complexity features of sport performance leads to the view of team playing as a result of self-organization in a complex system. Suggestions for improving the scholarly foundations of performance analysis for future research are offered.