The aim of this research is to investigate how long it takes to turn success into a competency for the elite football coaches who won the UEFA Champions League Finals, taking into account the ...importance of their professional experience. The model of the research was determined as “Basic Qualitative Research”, and the data collection technique in the research was determined as “Document Analysis”. The analysis of the data in the research was made according to the Miles and Huberman model as a descriptive analysis. The universe of the research consists of the teams that won the UEFA Champions League Finals from 1993 to 2022. Its sample is the coaches of the teams that won the UEFA Champions League between 1993-2022. The sampling method of the research is density sampling based on heuristic approach. When the general and active working times of all the coaches who won the UEFA Champions League final from 1993 to 2022 are examined, it is seen that although the average of the coaching experience of the group is high, the champions in the first years of their coaching career are numerically superior to the experienced coaches. As a result, it has been understood that the length of the coaching experience is not a factor that directly affects the success.
The current study aimed to investigate the evolutionary trends of players’ technical performances in the UEFA Champions League. Match statistics of 18 technical performance indicators from 1,125 ...matches (2,489 players, 16,247 full match observations) from the group and knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League (season 2009/2010 to 2017/2018) were analysed. Separate Poisson regression models were run in the generalised mixed linear modelling to compare the differences in technical performances among seasons, and the autocorrelation function was used to identify the correlations within technical variables. Results demonstrated that players’ match performances in variables of shots and shots on target showed trivial changes over the nine seasons. The defending related variables showed either downward trends or negligible changes, and the passing- and attacking-related variables showed different evolving paths throughout the course of the nine seasons. These findings may indicate that European teams are now more focussed on the control of match play, creating offensive space by increasing passing frequency and accuracy rather than crossing the ball from the wings into the penalty box. The significant autocorrelations were only detected in the attacking- and passing-related variables of crossing, though ball and aerial wins, they displayed persistence patterns among the nine seasons.
Research question: This study investigated the Twitter networks of the Champions League hashtag (#UCL) across the 2017 UEFA Champions League Final. Through an examination of network parameters and ...shifting structures, the analyses disclosed patterns of attention and power distributed among various sport stakeholders and fans. It advanced the inquiry of sport social media ecologies by engaging in theoretical discussions of media gatekeeping and power dynamics.
Research methods: The study employed a social network analysis. A data scraping software was utilized to collect all conversations attached to #UCL during the pre-match, halftime, and post-match. Overall, the data included 19,869 posts for pre-match, 3276 posts for halftime, and 5691 for post-match.
Results and findings: The #UCL network emerged with relatively low density and heterogeneous communication interest during the pre-match, and then moved towards higher density. Meanwhile, emergent game dynamics played a meaningful role in structuring the networked relationships. Large sport entities and star players, including the Champions League and Cristiano Ronaldo, had relatively stable and privileged positions in organizing the networks.
Implications: The results indicated that the Twitter network structures allowed the prominence of large sport entities to be further recognized and legitimated, whereas individual citizens had constrained capacity to generate influence. This finding holds implications for sport teams and their stakeholders as it underscores the relational and dynamic nature of digital networks and the importance of strategically managing social media as a critical communication resource.
This paper explores the expression of evaluative language in live football commentary in Persian and English. The main focus of this study was to explore differences in the use of evaluation in three ...different modes of football live commentary provided in the UEFA Champions League (UCL) 2014 final match between Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid: live radio commentary (LRC), live TV commentary (LTVC), and live text commentary (LTC). The expressions of evaluative language were analyzed regarding Attitude. Attitude is one of three central components of the appraisal theory (Martin and White, 2005) in language, which is concerned with the use of evaluative language. The study showed that attitudinal resources were prevalent and varied in the extracts analyzed. They were mainly Judgment oriented and negative. The case study was an attempt to contribute to this growing area of research by exploring the live football commentary genre. The mode of live commentary had a crucial role in determining the number of words spoken during the commentary. Also, the commentator’s biased opinion was undeniable, especially in the polarity of the evaluative expressions they used. In each commentary, by nature, there was a predominantly focus on product or process. In LTC, since the commentator is watching the finished action, the focus is entirely product-oriented. LTC also has more frequent use of Affect resources due to the fact that Affect in general deals with evaluating objects and products or how products and performances are valued. In the other two modes of commentaries, given that the commentators are reporting the events happening in the game in real-time and in the spur of moment, the focus is mostly on the process.
Introdução: O futebol de campo é um esporte praticado em todo mundo, sendo o gol o que diferencia o sucesso entre as equipes, porém, o estudo da ocorrência temporal de gols ao final das partidas da ...Champions League e a comparação entre as temporadas não é muito abordado na literatura. Objetivo: O objetivo do estudo é analisar a incidência de gols em partidas da Champions League das temporadas 2015/2016, 2016/2017 e 2017/2018. Materiais e Métodos: Foram analisadas 125 partidas de cada uma das temporadas da Champions League citadas, sendo retirado do site oficial da Union European Football Associations (UEFA)® (https://pt.uefa.com/), logo em seguida, os dados dos momentos dos gols foram divididos em 6 períodos de 15 minutos, totalizando 90 minutos no total, sendo levado em consideração os gols realizados nos acréscimos no final do primeiro tempo e segundo tempo, respectivamente. Foi realizada estatística descritiva e o teste de Kruskal Wallis. A análise estatística foi realizada no programa Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) versão 25.0, sendo o nível de significância fixado em 5%. Resultado: Os resultados demonstram que houve diferença significante na incidência de gols apenas nas partidas da Champions League temporada 2015/2016 (p=0,029) e na fase eliminatória da temporada 2016/2017 (p=0,018). Conclusão: Conclui-se que houve diferença significante na incidência de gols nas partidas da Champions League temporada 2015/2016 e na fase eliminatória da temporada 2016/2017.
Abstract
We argue for the application of bibliometric indices to quantify the long-term uncertainty of outcome in sports. The Euclidean index is proposed to reward quality over quantity, while the ...rectangle index can be an appropriate measure of core performance. Their differences are highlighted through an axiomatic analysis and several examples. Our approach also requires a weighting scheme to compare different achievements. The methodology is illustrated by studying the knockout stage of the UEFA Champions League in the 20 seasons played between 2003 and 2023: club and country performances as well as three types of competitive balance are considered. Measuring competition at the level of national associations is a novelty. All results are remarkably robust concerning the bibliometric index and the assigned weights. Since the performances of national associations are more stable than the results of individual clubs, it would be better to build the seeding in the UEFA Champions League group stage upon association coefficients adjusted for league finishing positions rather than club coefficients.
Fairness has several interpretations in sports, one of them being that the rules should guarantee incentive compatibility, namely, a team cannot be worse off due to better results in any feasible ...scenario. The current seeding regime of the most prestigious annual European club football tournament, the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Champions League, is shown to violate this requirement since the 2015/16 season. In particular, if the titleholder qualifies for the first pot by being a champion in a high-ranked league, its slot is given to a team from a lower-ranked association, which can harm a top club from the domestic championship of the titleholder. However, filling all vacancies through the national leagues excludes the presence of perverse incentives. UEFA is encouraged to introduce this policy from the 2021-24 cycle onwards.
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