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Soccer player performance is influenced by multiple unpredictable factors. During a game, score changes and pre-game expectations affect the effort exerted by players. This study used GPS wearable sensors to track players' energy expenditure in 5-min intervals, alongside recording the goal timings and the win and lose probabilities from betting sites. A mathematical model was developed that considers pre-game expectations (e.g., favorite, non-favorite), endurance, and goal difference (GD) dynamics on player effort. Particle Swarm and Nelder–Mead optimization methods were used to construct these models, both consistently converging to similar cost function values. The model outperformed baselines relying solely on mean and median power per GD. This improvement is underscored by the mean absolute error (MAE) of 396.87 ± 61.42 and root mean squared error (RMSE) of 520.69 ± 88.66 achieved by our model, as opposed to the B 1 MAE of 429.04 ± 84.87 and RMSE of 581.34 ± 185.84 , and B 2 MAE of 421.57 ± 95.96 and RMSE of 613.47 ± 300.11 observed across all players in the dataset. This research offers an enhancement to the current approaches for assessing players' responses to contextual factors, particularly GD. By utilizing wearable data and contextual factors, the proposed methods have the potential to improve decision-making and deepen the understanding of individual player characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behaviour of football fans in Ukraine has often taken the form of public order offences. However, since Maidan, fans have enjoyed a more positive image, linked to their recognition by and assimilation into Ukrainian society through their social and political activities. Eventually becoming one of the driving forces of revolutionary events and contributing to regime change, football fans have taken an active part in hostilities in the east of the country since 2014. This article explores the links between football fans, their collective violent practices and their social transformation before Maidan, at the time of Maidan and in the post-Maidan period. The author presents the idea of the connection between the conversion of various types of capital and the application of different kinds of collective violent practices, which can affect the status of the group within society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a relatively recent yet under-researched role in the governance of elite European football – namely, the Supporter Liaison Officer. The Supporter Liaison Officer, as appointed by football clubs, is commonly envisioned as a mediator between fans and the clubs, authorities and security actors situated in the European football field. However, following its formal inception in the 2012/2013, little is known about how stakeholders understand the evolving and heterogeneously implemented Supporter Liaison Officer role. Drawing upon documentary and interview data, this article unpacks two key themes to develop two primary arguments. First, it argues that Supporter Liaison Officers may be understood as 'social brokers' that bridge together stakeholders who often possess diverging viewpoints and whose relationships are impacted by social barriers. Second, Supporter Liaison Officers are perceived as possessors of what is conceptualised here as a 'supporter gaze'. Whilst contributing to the literature on supporter engagement and dialogue, these arguments also matter because if we understand the Supporter Liaison Officer implementation as influenced by supporter activism in Europe, then this article speaks to how outcomes of supporter pressure mature over time and their implications on football's supporter and security cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the weeping of football players and fans during a game when some unexpected or extremely emotional event occurs, such as winning the championship, or being demoted to a lower division. Several decades ago, neither players nor fans dared to express their emotions by weeping in public, nor by hugging and kissing. Football (soccer) was considered 'a man's game' and men don't cry. In victory or in failure men restrain themselves – they did not shed tears. In recent decades things changed. When an extreme event occurs on the pitch, players and/or fans express their emotions and weep in public. This behavioural change on the football pitch seems to stem from changes in the cultural environment: The macho man skin has gotten thinner. The 'new man', the metrosexual, has replaced the 'old man'; he is now allowed, even encouraged, to cry. The case study for this paper is the specific event of Hapoel Beer Sheva F.C. game in May 1998, where the result would decide whether the team survives in the senior division or be demoted to the second one. The club lost in the nineteenth minute. A heavy silence descended upon the terraces. The players collapsed on the pitch, covering their faces with their hands. Suddenly a crying voice: a young boy sat and sobbed – weeping for all of us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private football academies challenge the monopoly of Norwegian voluntary and democratic sport. Using field theory and framing approach as analytical perspectives, this article presents a media analysis that reveals that, first, association football and private academies agree on the fact that Norwegian football is not good enough and must improve. Second, they disagree on whether to improve it within association football exclusively or supplemented by private actors that are inspired by the international football field. Third, there is a negative popular view of private academies as too expensive, unconcerned with children's best interests, in violation of Norwegian sport's regulations for children's sport, and—in sum—thus being accused of destroying 'sport for all'. However, by employing the analytical concepts of habitus and fields, the article also shows how actors partake in several subfields—often on both sides of the private—association border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although team sports, particularly football, are extremely popular in sub-Saharan Africa, numerous major investments in the region's sports infrastructure have failed, often because of sub-optimal requirements planning and low spectator demand. In light of FIFA's recently announced aim to considerably invest into football stadia in Africa and in response to the lack of research into spectator demand in emerging countries, the present study assessed the impact facility-related factors on stadium attendance intentions in sub-Saharan Africa. Football fans in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe (N = 1,005) completed a questionnaire on facility-related factors that might affect their intentions to attend games. Structural equation modeling of the resulting data indicated which factors impact spectator behaviors. Results and Findings: Not all the factors with the greatest impact on spectator behaviors in the four countries studied are the same as those identified in developed economies. In addition, each country's specific characteristics appear to influence the extent to which different variables impact intentions to attend games through satisfaction with the stadium, satisfaction with the team, and trust in the team. The study provides a better comprehension of facility-related variables and their effects on spectator demand in sub-Saharan Africa, a region which has seen very little investigation, despite the popularity of sports in this part of the world. In addition, the study is one of among a few that analyses the relevance of trust for purchase intentions in a sports setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzes Korean professional soccer stadiums using Relph's concept of placelessness to understand why Korean professional soccer has rapidly declined in popularity and become a minority fan sport. Qualitative research methods were used to conduct a narrative analysis. The interview content was analyzed, and four problems were identified. The findings show that these stadiums are (1) a uniform space that excludes local culture, (2) used as a profit-generating tool for large corporations, (3) spaces controlled by the state, and (4) maximizing economic efficiency. Therefore, they have been used as a uniform space for social, cultural, political, and economic purposes. The Korean national soccer team's performance in international competitions seems to be satisfactory. However, the domestic professional soccer league is in a vulnerable condition. Thus, these stadiums should be established as true places by removing the element of placelessness in order to recover the popularity of Korean professional soccer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing research interest in the effects of social distancing measures introduced to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on social interaction, interpersonal relationships, and personal wellbeing. In the soccer arena, too, players, referees, managers, and fans are subject to social distancing measures when engaging in joint activities in times of the pandemic. This paper examines to what extent agents on the soccer pitch have adapted joint communicative acts such as goal celebrations and surrounding the referee as part of social distancing measures. It does so by focusing particularly on interactions between player-player (goal celebrations) and player-referee (issuing of yellow/red cards) in broadcasted Premier League games pre- and post-lockdown during the 2019/20 season by examining and comparing two datasets: games in the last round before the three-month lockdown break (round 29, 10 games, 7–9 March 2020) and the games in the first round after the restart of season 2019/20 with the implemented social distancing rules as prescribed by the Premier League's Season 2019/20Restart Guide (round 30, 10 games, 19–22 June 2020). Based on an exploratory, qualitative multimodal analysis of a total of 43 goal celebrations and the issuing of 66 yellow cards and one red card in the two datasets, we highlight varying realizations of similar joint communicative acts, thereby demonstrating how agents on the pitch adapt their interaction to social distancing rules. The results show players' occasional hesitation to gather closely with other players to celebrate a goal and their deviation to more common practices of engaging with others during times of COVID-19, for example fist bumps. Adaptation of interaction can also be observed with regard to player-referee interactions following a booking, most notably concerning surrounding the referee in contested decisions: While players still move towards the referee seemingly crowding the referee, there is, in some scenes, a visible restraint by players to ensure enough distancing between the players and the referee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we critically assess a common discourse of the football fan as hooligan, with the help of insights generated from a linguistic ethnography of football fan behaviour in one of their natural environments – the football stadium during a live match. Football fans have long been stereotypically understood through notions of hooliganism, with violent and aggressive behaviour frequently identified as a marker of this social group. However, researchers like Gary Armstrong have begun to problematize these discourses, claiming that only a tiny minority of football fans are in fact violent. In this article, we contribute to these efforts by drawing on insights gathered from a linguistic ethnography of football fans at an English, League 1 professional football club – Burton Albion Football Club. Researchers collected over 10 h of observational data, primarily in the form of field notes that documented all manner of fan behaviour – including songs, talk directed at players on the field, interactions amongst fans, reactions to on field events – across different sections of the stadium. The findings not only challenge the stereotypical notion of the football fan as hooligan, but they also highlight distinct subcultures being constructed within the same stadium through different behavioural tendencies and expectations regarding acceptable behaviour. These findings not only illustrate that the view of football fans as hooligans is uncritical and unsophisticated, but that our broader understanding of football fans is under theorized. Empirical insights of the kind provided by linguistic ethnographic work can help to challenge unchecked discourses about football fans that are perpetuated without a well-founded evidence base and help locate new dimensions for studying this important group of people in the wider football landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racism is a major social and cultural problem that has, in various forms, plagued football for a long time. Despite the attempts of official bodies to root it out, racist talk and behaviour are still rife among players as well as in fan communities. The present paper provides a case study of online users' comments on the media coverage of a series of controversial incidents during a recent UEFA Europa League matchinvolving an alleged verbal act of racial abuse between two players. Adopting a discourse analytical perspective, the paper contrasts how the match controversies were reflected in the users' public online discourses in two different cultural communities, namely the UK and the Czech Republic, and identifies some of the similarities and differences between the two. The analysis shows how the users reframe the underlying racist issue, trivialize it through humour and relativize its seriousness. The data indicate that such discourses surrounding football are important for understanding how fans construct various group identities and how specific socio-cultural contexts influence the perception of race-related controversies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined discourses related to an Indonesian soccer stadium stampede on 1st October 2022 using comments posted on Twitter. We conducted a lexicon-based sentiment analysis to identify the sentiments and emotions expressed in tweets and performed structural topic modeling to identify latent themes in the discourse. The majority of tweets (87.8%) expressed negative sentiments, while 8.2% and 4.0% of tweets expressed positive and neutral sentiments, respectively. The most common emotion expressed was fear (29.3%), followed by sadness and anger. Of the 19 themes identified, “Deaths and mortality” was the most prominent (15.1%), followed by “family impact”. The negative stampede discourse was related to public concerns such as “vigil” and “calls for bans and suspension,” while positive discourse focused more on the impact of the stampede. Public health institutions can leverage the volume and rapidity of social media to improve disaster prevention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Downcycled rubber, derived from end-of-life tires (ELTs), is frequently applied as crumb rubber (CR) as infill of synthetic turf in sports facilities. This practice has been questioned in recent years as numerous studies have reported the presence of potentially hazardous chemicals in this material. CR particles fall into the category of microplastics (MPs), making them possible vectors for emerging micropollutants. A preliminary study where volatile methylsiloxanes (VMSs) were found in CR originated the hypothesis that VMSs are present in this material worldwide. Consequently, the present work evaluates for the first time the levels and trends of seven VMSs in CR from synthetic turf football fields, while attempting to identify the main sources and impacts of these chemicals. A total of 135 CR samples and 12 other of alternative materials were analyzed, employing an ultrasound-assisted dispersive solid-phase extraction followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), and the presence of VMSs was confirmed in all samples, in total concentrations ranging from 1.60 to 5089 ng.g−1. The levels were higher in commercial CR (before field application), a reflection of the use of VMS-containing additives in tire production and/or the degradation of silicone polymers employed in vehicles. The VMSs generally decreased over time on the turf, as expected given their volatile nature and the wearing of the material. Finally, the human exposure doses to VMSs in CR (by dermal absorption and ingestion) for people in contact with synthetic turf in football fields were negligible (maximum total exposure of 20.5 ng.kgBW−1.year−1) in comparison with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) reference doses: 1.35 × 109 ng.kgBW−1.year−1 for D4 and 1.83 × 109 ng.kgBW−1.year−1 for D5. Nevertheless, more knowledge on exposure through inhalation and the combined effects of all substances is necessary to provide further corroboration. This work proved the presence of VMSs in CR from ELTs, another family of chemical of concern to take into account when studying MPs as vectors of other contaminants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultimate frisbee has gained great attention and enjoyed explosive growth in China from 2019 to 2022 (especially in 2022), but has also aroused heated controversies in cyberspace, typically in the football community. This paper explores the forms and underlying reasons for conflicts between the two sports. Through field observation, in-depth interviews, and a survey of amateur participants in both frisbee and football, the paper finds that conflicts between the two sports, which arise from ultimate frisbee's quest for legitimacy, are exaggerated as a result of the mediatization of sports. The study further revealed that Frisbee, as an alternative sport, exhibits notable cultural distinctions from football, a traditional sport. This divergence in sports culture mirrors the generational gap. Consequently, the conflict between the two sports is more of an intergenerational conflict within the realm of sports culture, reflecting the overall transformation of Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have emerged as a promising solution for reconnaissance missions, overcoming labor cost, frequency, and subjectivity issues associated with manual procedures. However, for dynamic environments such as construction sites, the constantly changing conditions hinder a manager from planning the UGV's paths. For an autonomous monitoring mission, the path planning should be dealt with by having a map with the site's most recent scene. In this study, we develop a mobile app capable of local map updates by overlaying an image on a mapping API (e.g., Google Maps) hence working as a digital twin capable of creating a dynamic representation of the updated terrain over the mapping API. UGV operators can draw a path on such an updated construction scene using a tablet PC or smartphone. Discrete GPS information (e.g., latitudinal, and longitudinal) is executed for the UGV's controller. In the overlaying procedure, the homographic relation between the image and map is automatically computed and then projected. We successfully demonstrated the capabilities of the technique with two construction sites and a soccer field using images from the ground and satellite, respectively. The error generation is quantitatively measured and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football stadiums are one of the places where nationalistic views are presented. This is done by means of displays held by organised supporters – ultras. This study aims to examine (1) to what extent the postulates of performative national ideology presented by ultras in Polish stadiums are shared by fans of Polish football clubs; and (2) whether they translate into corresponding attitudes at the individual level. The study is based on a survey conducted on a sample representative for Polish citizens (N = 4030) from which football fans were extracted (N = 643). The results show that being a fan of a Polish football club accounts for significantly higher scores on postulates referring to ethnic and racial criteria of national identity, belief in permanent struggle of nations, small nation type of collective memory and glorification of past war heroes. They also indicate that a higher level of acceptance of these postulates by fans predicts higher levels of prejudice against minorities and other nations, and higher levels of national pride. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football has been related to various fields of linguistics, and linguistic landscape (LL) research is no exception. The study examines how football fans in a linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse region claim the club and the stadium as their own space in the process of reterritorialization (Monaghan 2020), due to numerous linguistic and semiotic resources. The research site is a Hungarian minority context in the public space of a football stadium in Sfântu Gheorghe, Romania. The linguistic landscape of football in Sfântu Gheorghe has never been explored in depth before. The study draws on a corpus based on photographs, videos taken inside and outside of the stadium, and data collected from the social media. The analysis shows that the presence of Hungarian in this particular LL indexes collective identity and describes the positioning strategies of the Hungarian minority speakers. The study also explores the processes of identity negotiation in which they are engaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is an exploration of the nexus between hooliganism and literary fiction in Philip Winkler’s 2016 acclaimed debut novel Hool. The novel thematizes a violent form of football fandom and mixes fiction with real-life facts surrounding the professional German team Hannover 96. The novel uses football and fandom as important elements in a coming-of-age story, but it only moderately highlights the game itself, the team, its players, results, and tables. Hool is a protagonist’s search for identity and purpose in life and for whom football and hooliganism serve as temporary constants and spaces of belonging. Fandom, or rather its violent variant hooliganism, however, reveals itself to be only a transitory space of comfort that Heiko can hold on to for a limited time during his adolescence. A key undertaking of this study is the exploration of how the novel maps various spaces of combat and struggle inside and beyond the football field. Furthermore, this essay contextualizes Hool as a unique German-language novel within the current debates about the significant commercialization of football in Germany and across Europe. These trajectories have caused a surge of resistance from the common football fan, who is increasingly pushed into the role of an estranged consumer of an over-priced commodity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the lens of cinema, this article focuses on the subject of football as a powerful medium of political expression. It is the first comprehensive analysis of the 1989 DEFA film … und freitags in die “Grüne Hölle” by Ernst Cantzler and it reads the documentary in close relation to the historic developments during the late years of the GDR. Viewing the football stadium as a symbolic stand-in for East Germany, this article understands Cantzler’s work as a well-crafted montage that–metaphorically–lays out two possible scenarios for the end of German division: a peaceful revolution and a violent uprising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the cultural and historical significance of football in Germany, tracing its impact from the late 19th century to the present day. Topics include the transformative role of football in German society, its portrayal in literature and cinema, and its influence on cultural production.

Although soccer has become vastly popular on a global scale as evident in the constant setup of new leagues and teams worldwide, there are critical issues that primarily regard attendance rates at live soccer matches. This is due to low attendance rates, specifically in comparison to the capacity of stadiums. Therefore, it is important to investigate factors and attributes that can potentially resolve such issues. Thus, this study investigates stadium attributes as predicting factors of stadium loyalty in Saudi Arabia. Especially in Saudi Arabia where soccer is considered as the national sport, with huge financial inflow towards soccer infrastructure, there remain the issues of low attendance rate and utilization of soccer stadiums. Thus, by theorizing constructs and related hypotheses based on the extant literature and further accessing them through SEM, we were able to prove not only the hypothesized relations, but also drew out the important implications for both the theoretical and practical domains in Saudi Arabia and countries of the Gulf region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The ability to perform repeated sprints is one of the most important physical abilities in soccer. Aim of Study. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the ability to perform repeated sprints (6 × 20 m in a 15-s cycle) in female soccer players from two different age groups, with aerobic capacity (YYIR1), jumping ability (single-leg hop test), isokinetic strength (60°/s, 180°/s, 300°/s), speed performance (S10-m and S30-m), and change of direction ability (505 COD test). The second objective of the study was to compare the performances of the two different groups in the tests. Material and Methods. Twenty-four female soccer players from Greece participated in this study and they were divided into two groups: (i) U-16 (division II) female soccer athletes (age: 15.8 ± 0.8 years, height: 160.5 ± 5.1 cm, body mass: 59.4 ± 7 kg), and (ii) adult female (division I) soccer athletes (age: 21.9 ± 4.1 years, height: 165.7 ± 6.1 cm, body mass: 62.2 ± 7.5 kg). The Pearson correlation coefficient and t-test for independent samples were used for statistical analysis. Results. The S10-m, S30-m and single-leg hop tests appeared to be the variables most associated with the total time in the RSA test in U-16 female soccer players. S10-m and the change of direction ability appeared to be the variables most associated with the total time in the RSA test in adult female players. Conclusions. It seems that U-16 Greek female soccer players do not differ from adults in most of the physical fitness tests conducted in the field and laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National sports stadiums are often deeply affected by the politics of identity and mythology. Questions of 'nationality' and the responsibility of safeguarding the idea of a specific 'national' sports culture often take a central position in the rhetoric surrounding national sports stadiums. This also has an impact on how they are designed, developed and operated. In this paper, we explore the legacy of Nordic national football stadiums. Our main case is Ullevål stadium in Oslo, which we compare with the national football stadiums in Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden. Through this study, we compare the changing functions and symbolic significances of the respective stadiums in light of national sports narratives and architectural qualities. We argue that the meaning of national stadiums is influenced both by assumptions about national sports identity and expectations embedded in football architecture. A key finding is that the modernist idiom of 'form follows function' still seems to reign as a token of football stadium quality, in contrast to the idea of the postmodern stadium, associated with aesthetic confusion, shallow commodification, and the relegation of football to a secondary role. Yet we also found that typical modernist and postmodernist features often co-exist, with examples of multi-functionality evident throughout the history of the national Nordic football stadiums. Another crucial finding is that history continues to play a part in the contemporary configurations of Nordic national stadiums, even in cases where the physical stadium heritage has been completely obliterated or reconstructed beyond recognition from its original physical design. From a theoretical point of view, we build on previous scholarly work on national sports culture, Nordic football culture in particular, as well as geographical, anthropological and architectural studies of football stadiums. Archival research, document studies and literature review are the primary methodological approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Participatory research methods promote collaborations between researchers and communities to collectively overcome implementation challenges for sustainable social change. Programmes usually take a top-down approach to addressing such challenges. This study developed and piloted contextualised participatory methods to identify community structures that could improve the equity of medicine administration for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in northern and southern Nigeria. Methods Participants and researchers conducted transect walks and social mapping to understand which community-based structures could be used to maximise accessibility and acceptability of medicines for NTDs. Results Using visual participatory methods with a diverse set of stakeholders facilitated the identification of new structures within the community that could be used to improve the equity of medicine distribution and access. Available materials such as sticks, stones and leaves were appropriately used by respondents in the rural areas, which increased meaningful engagement irrespective of their literacy level. Structures identified included Qur'anic schools, football grounds, mechanics shops, shrines, village head's houses and worship centres. Challenges in using these structures for medicine distribution included resistance from school authorities and restrictions to women's access due to traditions and norms, particularly within palaces and mosques. Conclusions This article highlights the importance of meaningful community engagement methods and engaging gatekeepers in visual participatory methods. It emphasizes the importance of including divergent views of various population groups in order to ensure that all communities are reached by NTDs programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern analyses of football games require precise recordings of positions and movements. The ZXY arena tracking system reports the position of players wearing a dedicated chip (transponder) at high time resolution. The main issue addressed here is the quality of the system's output data. Filtering the data to reduce noise may affect the outcome adversely. Therefore, we have examined the precision of the data given, possible influence by sources of noise, the effect of the filtering, and the accuracy of the built-in calculations. The system's reported positions of the transponders at rest and during different types of movements, including accelerations, were recorded and compared with the true positions, speeds, and accelerations. The reported position has a random error of ≈0.2 m, defining the system's upper spatial resolution. The error in signals interrupted by a human body was of that magnitude or less. There was no significant influence of nearby transponders. Filtering the data delayed the time resolution. Consequently, accelerations were dampened and delayed, causing an error of 1 m for sudden changes in position. Moreover, fluctuations of the foot speed of a running person were not accurately reproduced, but rather, averaged over time periods >1 s. Results calculated from measured values appeared accurate and were readily reproduced in a spreadsheet output. In conclusion, the ZXY system reports the position with little random error. Its main limitation is caused by averaging of the signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behaviour recognition technology is an interdisciplinary technology, integrating many research achievements in computer vision, deep learning, pattern recognition and other fields. The key information of bone data on human behavior can not only accurately describe the motion posture of the human body in three-dimensional space, but also its rigid connection structure is robust to various external interference factors. However, the behavioral recognition algorithm is influenced by different factors such as background, light and environment, which is easy to lead to unstable recognition accuracy and limited application scenarios. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose a noise filtering algorithm based on data correlation and skeleton energy model filtering, construct a set of football player data sets, using the ST-GCN algorithm to train the skeleton characteristics of football players, and construct a behavior recognition system applied to football players. Finally, by comparing the accuracy of Deep LSTM, 2s-AGCN and the algorithm in this paper, the accuracy of TOP1 and TOP5 is 39.97% and 66.34%, respectively, which are significantly higher than the other two algorithms. It can realize the statistics of athletes and analyze the technical and tactical movements of players on the football field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sudden deaths in competitive athletes are highly visible but potentially preventable events that generate great interest amongst the cardiovascular community and general public. Internet searches were performed using a combination of keywords and operators to produce search results for sudden death or cardiac arrest on the field in professional soccer players. We identified 35 male professional soccer players (mean age 26 ± 5 years) who experienced collapse and cardiac arrest on the field (most during matches) in Europe from December 2002 to February 2022 with 63% in the last 6 years. Twenty-five have died on the field or later in a hospital despite cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Of the 10 survivors, eight were implanted with cardioverter-defibrillators for secondary (n = 6) or primary (n = 2) prevention and returned to full competition; five of the 8 required successful device therapy during matches or training. Cardiac arrest and sudden death can occur not uncommonly in professional athletes highly trained over decades and participating at an elite sports level. Our observations also underscore the importance of targeted preparticipation cardiovascular screening, and availability of external defibrillators on the playing field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]