The performance analyst in brazil: Panoramas and perspectives in professional football

Abstract

Game analysis or performance analysis, given its relationship with performance optimization, has gained relevance in recent decades in high-performance football as a way to minimize the unpredictability inherent in the game, based on the identification of collective strengths and weaknesses and of a team and its opponents. Such tasks, for a long time performed by the coach himself, became such a demand for information and increased levels of competitive requirements, operated by a specific professional: the performance analyst, a recurrent figure largely in professional football clubs in Brazil. The objective of the study, therefore, was to investigate the panoramas and perspectives of professionals in performance analysis regarding their role in the context of high performance. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were carried out, and the organization of the answers was based on the Content Analysis technique. It was possible to verify that the interest in the function is paved by the academic environment and that the demands of the performance analysis professional are guided by three aspects: prospecting athletes, quali-quantitative analysis of opponents, quali-quantitative analysis of the team itself, both in the collective scope, as individually, being also subject to a fourth dimension aimed at the analysis of training. Such a vision presupposes the overcoming of this professional as a mere collector and administrator of statistical data in favor of individuals who have pedagogical skills, deep knowledge about the specific dynamics of the football game, as well as the establishment of didactic relationships with the athletes of a team and, above all, with the coach and his auxiliary committee.