… “A lot of people think I am only young and it is only my second season in the Premier League but I do not feel as if I am far away from guys like that,” he said. “I got a lot of games under my belt in the lower leagues and I don’t feel the Premier League or England is that much different. In some ways non-league and League Two is the hard challenge.”
Pickford faced an intimidating atmosphere in the last-16 game at Moscow’s Spartak Stadium which was dominated by 30,000 boisterous Colombia fans. He played the pivotal role in England winning a World Cup penalty shootout for the first time with his save of Carlos Bacca’s effort. But Pickford insists even the most partisan crowds in Russia could not compare to the vicious insults he was subjected to early in his career.
France has had the most native players and coaches in the last 4 World Cups… and their dominance has been on the rise. Players like Kylian Mbappe and Paul Pogba are the children of immigrants and the product of the French soccer academy system. French- born players have played for Togo, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Argentina, Portugal, and many more.
… all the national teams, from youth to senior, were interconnected through common philosophy and tactics. Children identified by Tabarez and his staff knew from an early age what would be expected of them.
A broad understanding of the system was critical because, being from a small country, elite players would, at some point, go abroad to advance their careers. The Montevideo derby between Nacional and Penarol is one of the world’s fiercest but, inevitably, the best talent would end up plying their trade in, among other places, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
Players embrace individual responsibility and, when they report to national team camp, everyone is on the same page.
There are also advantages to being in a small country: Tabarez is able to visit all developmental academies and gain greater insight to rising prospects. No one is lost in the shuffle.
… In this World Cup, Guardiola’s impact is more spread out. Four City players — Raheem Sterling, Fabian Delph, John Stones and Kyle Walker — have started for England while Belgium has used two, Kevin De Bruyne and Vincent Kompany.
That not only gives England an edge in numbers but its coach, Gareth Southgate, also plays Guardiola’s style of soccer, preaching possession and building out of the back.
“I wouldn’t be here without what he has done for me over the last two years, as a player and as a person,” Stones said of Guardiola. “Since I came to City, he always had the right things to say to me and simple things. That is what is important, not flooding your mind and overloading you with too much information. Giving you the right amount and making everything simple.”
… It was only last month that the LTA unveiled its long-awaited plan, which involves two new “national academies” in Loughborough and Stirling, due to open next year.
This new ‘‘Performance Pathway’’ model is the brainchild of performance director Simon Timson, who has previously set up development pathways in bobsleigh and cricket. Timson divides opinion. He boasts a heavyweight CV, but the counter-argument is that he is not a tennis man and struggles to understand the sport’s unique ecology.
The Performance Pathway is to be managed by Ian Yates, a Timson associate with experience in bobsleigh, taekwondo and cycling, while the sports-science end will be run by former rugby man Dan Lewindon.
Winning a national championship may be the ultimate goal of sports team today, but for foraging societies long ago, games involving contact may have helped hone skills for warfare, say researchers.
“Skeletal evidence from Africa suggests that warfare dates back to at least 10,000 years ago,” says Michelle Scalise Sugiyama of the University of Oregon’s anthropology department. “People ask often ask, what did people back then fight about? Well, that can be answered with, ‘What do you got?’”
In a paper in the journal Human Nature, Scalise Sugiyama and colleagues identified a previously unrecognized type of play, or coalitional play fighting, and tested for its presence in hunter-gatherer societies. They associated eight motor activities—catching, dodging, grappling, kicking, parrying, running, striking, and throwing—with both team play fighting and lethal raiding.
This study aimed to profile positional movement characteristics of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I male soccer players. Eighteen Division I male soccer players were monitored using global positioning systems, inertial movement, and heart rate (HR) technology during 24 matches over a full competitive season (N = 235 observations). Positional groups were classified as either a forward (F), center midfield (CM), wide midfield (WM), or defender (D). Movement was profiled by locomotor (walking [0–7.19 km·h−1], jogging [7.20–14.39 km·h−1], running [14.40–21.59 km·h−1], and sprinting [>21.6 km·h−1]), and acceleration/deceleration characteristics (low intensity [0–1.99 m·s2], moderate intensity [2–3.99 m·s2], and high intensity [>4 m·s2]). Players averaged distances of 9,367 ± 2,149 m per match at speeds of 91 ± 20 m·min−1 and physiological intensities of 78 ± 8 %HRmax. Center midfields demonstrated the highest average speeds (97 ± 20 m·min−1) and covered the most distance (9,941 ± 2,140 m). Wide midfields accumulated the most sprint distance (391 ± 145 m) and high-intensity accelerations (129 ± 30 n)/decelerations (96 ± 24 n). Several practically meaningful differences exist between positions for internal and external load metrics. Match loads seen in NCAA Division I soccer vary from reports of professional soccer; however, the effects of match regulation, structure, and congestion, which are unique to NCAA soccer, require further investigation. Physical and physiological load monitoring of NCAA soccer may aid coaches and practitioners in the periodization of training programs leading up to and during a competitive soccer season. These data speak to the necessity for examining both internal and external loads by position.
… [Charlie] Coiner, 58, envisions his company as a revolutionary approach for playbooks that will make PDF play diagrams and drawing plays from scratch a thing of the past.
“We want to be kind of like the Google of football plays,” Coiner said, “to where instead of going online, you’re like, ‘Let’s go check FirstDown PlayBook and see what they’ve got.’”
EurekAlert! Science News, The University of Hong Kong from
… This mechanically flexible organic electronic device developed by Dr Chan’s team, as a demonstration of concept, is to measure the biological information in real-time. This device can sense the CRP level down to 1ug/mL, and hence more sufficient to deviate the health condition of the patients. The research finding was published recently in journal Advanced Science.
CRP level in the blood is an important indicator reflecting the level of the inflammation of patients. It is currently tested by blood analysis which cannot provide real-time information of the patients. In order to continuously monitor some proteins or biomarker levels in the human body, the common approach is to perform regular blood analysis every certain period of time. However, it would still need hours or longer to complete one test and no real-time information can be provided. The current organic device developed by Dr Chan’s team can measure the biological information in real-time with very little sample volume.
On May 9, 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) filed 2 complaints seeking permanent injunction to stop 2 stem cell clinics from marketing stem cell products that did not have FDA approval and for deviation from standard good manufacturing practices requirements.5 This follows the FDA’s stated plan to support scientific research related to regenerative medicine and a policy framework to promote the approval of legitimate regenerative medicine products but, at the same time, to initiate enforcement actions against clinics marketing products using unapproved manufacturing protocols. In the FDA news release, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stated, “Cell-based regenerative medicine holds significant medical opportunity, but we’ve also seen some bad actors leverage the scientific promise of this field to peddle unapproved treatments that put patient’s health at risk.” He furthermore stated, “In some instances, patients have suffered serious and permanent harm after receiving these unapproved products.” These clinics had received warning letters from the FDA but failed to come into compliance with the law, leading to the enforcement actions.
What does this mean for us sports medicine practitioners? The topic of biologic augmentation of soft tissue healing continues to be of significant interest to sports medicine specialists and readers of the American Journal of Sports Medicine. The journal has become an important source of rigorous information in this area. Over the last year, the FDA has focused increased attention on “regenerative medicine,” and here I provide an update on the current status and recent guidelines in this area.
In a recent interview, Germany’s team doctor, Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt, claimed that there was no doping in football because it didn’t really help—a statement that was later rejected by the country’s National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). But it’s not only NADA that has shown that soccer players can and do benefit from taking performance-enhancing drugs.
The 2017 NCAA Student-Athlete Substance Use Survey, developed by the NCAA’s research staff, provides the latest insights into the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco by student-athletes. The study, released in June 2018, shows college athletes continue to make healthier decisions in many areas than their peers in the general student body.
The football World Cup and the Olympic games have long vied for the title of the world’s biggest sporting event. The marquee competitions for many of the planet’s most popular athletes are watched by nearly half of humanity, and generate more revenue than the annual GDP of one-quarter of the world’s countries (roughly $9bn for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, and a projected $6bn for the current World Cup in Russia). Yet with so much on the line, there seems to be a vast gap in how willingly competitors in the two events use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).
During the past decade, more than 200 athletes have failed doping tests at the Olympics. An anonymous survey of competitors at the 2011 World Athletics Championships suggested that at least 30% of them had used banned substances in the previous year. By contrast, the last time a player at the World Cup was caught using PEDs was in 1994, when Diego Maradona, Argentina’s biggest star, tested positive for five variants of ephedrine, a prohibited stimulant. Every footballer at the current tournament has been tested at least once this year by FIFA, which collected 2,761 samples between January and kick-off on June 14th, an increase from 1,249 in the same period leading up to the competition in 2014. One player at the World Cup did fail a drugs test in 2017—Paolo Guerrerro, Peru’s captain, who returned a positive sample for cocaine—but he was allowed to play anyway.
… Fans and the news media often talk about how an ascendant star at a World Cup will be rewarded not just with the praise of his nation but a subsequent high-profile move to a title contender in England, Spain, Italy or Germany. It is one of the tropes of every major summer tournament.
The clubs themselves, though, increasingly do not see it that way. “If you are waiting for the World Cup to make decisions, you’re not doing your work well enough,” said the head of recruitment at a leading Premier League team, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak about his club’s research operations.
In both the men’s and women’s draws, seeds have been dropping like flies at Wimbledon this year (or perhaps that should be flying ants…). Records have been set for both the most seeds losing in the men’s and women’s first rounds combined and the most women’s top 8 seeds to exit before the 3rd round.
In fact, these are records for both Wimbledon and for all four Grand Slams since the expansion to 32 seeds in each draw in mid-2001. I’ve taken a closer look at the records to gain insight into the nature of these landmarks, and also examined the pre-match probabilities for the first-round upsets.