[Spanish translation] Social networks analysis in sports through an ecological approach—a theoretical framework

Abstract

Performance analysis is a discipline that is closely related to the pedagogy of sports. The theoretical foundations that undergird methodological choices must be well established in order for a convergence to exist between evaluation instruments and the process of teaching and training. The objective of the present theoretical study was to present and discuss the importance and representativeness of social networks analysis in order to evaluate the performance in group sports. The main purpose of social networks analysis is to study the relationships among players, in order to identify possible causes and consequences of the events that took place during a match. Thus, the analysis of social networks works differently from traditional analyses, whose major focus is on the subject, or in notational analyses that are most commonly used and that look for the accumulation of frequency of the events that have occurred (e.g., goals scored, ball possession, finishing zones). Such an instrument of evaluation, theoretically positioned on an ecological approach, proves effective for the identification of interaction patterns in a group and for understanding the social artifices that help to understand performance in a team. Thus, teams come to be analyzed as social groups instead of isolated individuals. This study also presents the main practical applications of this evaluation instrument in different group sports such as soccer football, indoor soccer, handball, basketball and volleyball.