High-performance football in Spain: Systematic review (2015–2019)

Abstract

Research in relation to elite football has shown a positive impact in the improvement of different variables related to training processes, as well as in the evaluation and analysis of performance. The objective of this review is to offer an overview of the most recent scientific publications in relation to high-performance Spanish football. For this, a systematic review was carried out from 2015 to 2019, searching with the terms of the UNESCO Thesaurus: “football”, “Spanish”, “Spain”, “the league”, “elite”, “professional football”, or “high performance” in two important international databases (Scopus and Web of Science) and in the Spanish Dialnet database, allowing the selection of original articles (experimental, descriptive, quasi-experimental and / or case studies), which included information on this line of research. A total of 380 articles were found, although after applying the review's inclusion criteria, they were reduced to 56 articles. These publications were divided into four main categories: 1) research related to game conditions; 2) research related to training and workloads of physical, physiological and mechanical capacities; 3) research related to tactical-technical aspects; and 4) other topics investigated. A discussion was had on each of these categories. In conclusion, this systematic review makes it possible to observe the analysis of Spanish high-performance football research easily and quickly in recent years, as well as identify the most relevant scientific issues at present. These results are interesting for researchers and/or professional technical coaches of football, as well as for university professors or coaching courses.