The USMNT soccer team faltered late in the match it played against Chile, after playing a winning opening 45+ minutes. This has been a team that seeks competitive advantage with the physical endurance it possesses. U.S. players were running hard during the later stages as Chile scored twice to take the lead. They were not, however, thinking clearly or quickly. The mental fatigue was evident on offense when they failed to advance the ball and on defense when they failed to respond against a quicker-thinking opponent.
This year’s Super Bowl shapes up as an intense physical and mental competition between the Seahawks and Patriots. Word surfaced after the NFC Championship game that Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson likely suffered a concussion during a big 2nd Quarter hit. The explanation goes that he got back to playing his A-game in the 4th Quarter, in time to lead the Seahawks to touchdowns and a comeback win.
Football reporters and analysts have also questioned the conservative decision-making by Packers coach Mike McCarthy. In high-leverage situations that supported taking a modest risk, like passing more instead of running less, McCarthy chose to play it safe, and allowed the other team to hang in the game.
Harvard professor Cass Sunstein has a book coming out later this year, Choosing Not to Choose, that looks at people’s decision-making habits. The book is based on a lecture that Sunstein developed to explore the default settings that often come into play with individual decisions. Most of the time we are well served by automating our decisions through experience, that is, making a decision in advance of the situation we make it in and then using it as the default when the situation arises. Timeshifting (or offloading) the cognitive overhead for a decision can lead to more, better, easier decision-making.
Sunstein has rules that outline the best time and place for making deliberative, in-the-moment, active choices from a set of alternatives. Often, according to Sunstein, it is an institution that has a say in whether an active or a default choice is the norm. In sports, those institutions are typically the teams and the choice norms come from the organization’s culture. Teams are where the costs of decisions and the costs of errors are most recognizable and where the value on players’ and coaches’ decision-making gets set.
Football and basketball coaches have enormous late-game decision-making responsibility in close games and they are not immune to brain fatigue. Their job becomes much much easier when they can offload some of the responsibility to an on-field or on-court playmaker. “Hero ball” has become the term of art for these situations which are really a complex mix of high stakes, team culture and cognitive stamina. In many cases it is the default choice for a coach or team and changing that norm is a major challenge.
Soccer coaches play less of a role in those high-leverage late-game moments. I think it is a conscious decision that the USMNT is making to develop players’ mental endurance. The move made by U.S. coaches to radically change the defensive formation from a 4-man backline to a 3-man backline is a sort of intelligence test for American players.
The cognitive development is something they need if those players are not playing regularly at the highest levels of European professional soccer. The last 10 minutes of those games are the most physically and mentally taxing competition an athlete can participate in on a regular basis. (Did you see the end of Chelsea versus Manchester City?)
A smart essay by Jeff Carlisle on 17-year old American soccer phenom Christian Pulisic at ESPNFC talks about the transition he is about to make, going to Bundesliga’s Borussia Dortmund, as a challenge that will test the young man’s psychic and emotional makeup as much as it tests his soccer ability.
Switching back to the Super Bowl, the game should come down to the Patriots Belicheck-Brady advantage in experience and preparation against the Seahawks in-the-moment athletic advantage. Hopefully the game comes down to a close 4th quarter and we all see the two teams perform at maximum physical and intellectual capacity.
The Best Things I Read Last Week:
- Data-led team building: increasing the odds of success The Guardian, UK … As data plays a larger and larger role in sports organizations, the main differentiator isn’t necessarily the analysis but the ability to use the analysis to collaborate effectively.
- The between-match variability of peak power output and Creatine Kinase responses to soccer match-play Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, Teesside University … Performance coaches can jump test for power output, or test metabolism biomarkers chemically; both give an indication of athlete recovery. This comparison found the biomarker test is more variable but the check of both tests reinforced the 48-hour window for post-match recovery.
- How Inflammation Can Affect Recovery, Performance and Overall Wellness SpeedEndurance.com … An excellent discussion of the athletic performance tradeoffs with inflammation. On one hand it is a necessary part of strength-building muscle adaption; on the other hand it complicates recovery and suggests care interventions.
- MU to join with Bucks in creating sports performance center Milwaukee Journal Sentinel … The NBA Bucks and the NCAA Marquette University are teaming on a join athlete performance research center. One source of ongoing competitive advantage for teams is the intellectual (often scientific and technical) resources of their community.
- The Tech that Will Predict (and Prevent) Your Next Running Injury Outside Online … Good rundown of sensor and data technologies used by teams and by individual athletes to avoid injury.
- Former Steelers quarterback, Pitt team up for startup The Pitt News … Pittsburgh is a city with exceptional medical and engineering know how, and a real entrepreneurial bent. This is neither the first nor last sports science startup to emerge there.