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The aims in the current programme of research were to examine the processes underpinning superior anticipation and decision making in soccer and how these are acquired through practice. The expert performance approach (Ericsson & Smith, 1991) was adopted as a guiding framework. In Chapter 2, an attempt was made to develop and validate a representative task simulation to capture reproducible superior performance in soccer under standardised laboratory conditions. In Chapters 3 and 4, skill-based differences in anticipation and decision making were examined using eye-movement recording and verbal reports of thinking. Skilled soccer players were more accurate at anticipation and decision making compared with less skilled players. When compared with their less skilled counterparts, skilled soccer players revealed more efficient and effective visual search strategies and cognitive thought strategies that varied based on the unique situation and task constraints imposed by the game context. Additionally, in Chapter 4, a continuous and dynamic interaction was identified between the different key perceptual-cognitive skills (i.e., postural cues, pattern recognition, and situational probabilities), with their relative importance varying considerably across game situations. In Chapter 5, the acquisition and development of superior anticipation and decision making in soccer players was examined. Skilled players who were high-performing anticipators/decision makers accumulated significantly more hours per year in soccer-specific deliberate play activities during childhood compared to skilled players who were low-performing and novice players. Findings have implications for theory and practice, extending research in the area of perceptual-cognitive expertise and overcoming some of the limitations with previous research.

One of the most popular sports globally, soccer has seen a rise in the demands of the game over recent years. An increase in intensity and playing demands, coupled with growing social and economic pressures on soccer players means that optimal preparation is of paramount importance. Recent research has found the modern game, depending on positional role, to consist of approximately 60% more sprint distance in the English Premier League, which was also found to be the case for frequency and success of discrete technical actions (Bush et al., 2015). As a result, the focus on soccer training and player preparedness is becoming more prevalent in scientific research. By designing the appropriate training load, and thus periodization strategies, the aim is to achieve peak fitness in the most efficient way, whilst minimising the risk of injury and illness. Traditionally, training intensity has been based on heart rate responses, however, the emergence of tracking microtechnology such as global positioning system (GPS) and inertial sensors are now able to further quantify biomechanical load as well as physiological stress. Detailed pictures of internal and external loading indices such as these then combine to produce a more holistic view of training load experience by the player during typical drills and phases of training in soccer. The premise of this research is to gain greater understanding of the physical demands of common training methodologies in elite soccer to support optimal match performance. The coaching process may then benefit from being able to prescribe the most effective training to support these. The first experimental chapter in this thesis began by quantify gross training loads of the pre-season and in-season phases in soccer. A broader picture of the training loads inherent in these distinct phases brought more detail as to the type and extent of external loading experienced by soccer players at these times, and how the inclusion of match play influences weekly training rhythms. Training volume (total distance) was found to be high at the start compared to the end of pre-season (37 kilometres and 28 kilometres), where high cardiovascular loads were attained as part of the conditioning focus. This progressed transiently, however, to involve higher-speed, acceleration and change-of-direction stimuli at the end of pre-season compared to the start and to that in-season (1.18 kilometres, 0.70 kilometres and 0.42 kilometres high-intensity running; with 37, 25 and 23 accelerations >3m/s2 respectively) . The decrease in volume and increase in maximal anaerobic activity was evident in the training focus as friendly matches were introduced before the competitive season. The influence of match-play as being a large physical dose in the training week may then determine the change in weekly periodisation and how resulting training loads applied and tapered, if necessary. The focus of research was then directed more specifically to the most common mode of training in soccer, that also featured regularly in the pre-season period in the present study, small-sided games (SSG). The subsequent studies examined numerous manipulations of this specific form of soccer conditioning, such as player numbers as well as absolute and relative playing space available. In contrast to some previous literature, changing the number of players did not seem to influence training responses significantly, although playing format in the possession style brought about larger effects for heart rate (89.9%HRmax) and average velocity (7.6km/h-1). However, the following studies (Chapters 5, 6 and 7) revealed a greater influence of relative playing space available to players in SSG. The larger area at their disposal brought about greater aerobic responses (~90%HRmax), by allowing higher average and peak velocities (>25km/h-1), as well as greater distance acceleration behaviour at greater thresholds (>2.8m/s2). Furthermore, the data points towards space as being a large determinant in strategy of the player in small-sided games (SSG), subsequently shaping their movement behaviour and resulting physical responses. For example, higher average velocities in a possession format (8km/h-1) reflects higher work rate and heart rate load but makes achieving significant neuromuscular accelerations at a high level difficult given higher starting velocities prior to the most intense accelerations (4.2km/h-1). By altering space available and even through intentional numerical imbalances in team numbers, it may be easier for coaches to achieve the desired stimulus for the session or individual player, whether that is for aerobic and neuromuscular conditioning. Large effects were found for heart rate being higher in the underloaded team (85-90%HRmax) compared to the team with more players (80-85%HRmax) as well as for RPE (5AU versus 7AU). This was also apparent for meterage and therefore average velocity. It would also seem neuromuscular load through high acceleration and deceleration efforts were more pronounced with less numbers (given the need to press and close down opponents) and in a larger area relative to the number of players on the underloaded team. The peak accelerations and deceleration achieved was also higher when playing with less players (3-6.2m/s2 and 3-6.1m/s2) Having detailed ways in which to reach desired physical loading responses in common small training formats, Chapter 8 compared SSG to larger 9v9 formats with full-size 11v11 friendly matches. This enabled absolute and relative comparisons to be made and to understand the extent to which smaller training formats are able to replicate the required movements to be successful in competition. In relative terms, it was revealed that relative acceleration distance and Player Load were higher in smaller 4v4 games than match-play (1.1m.min-1 and 0.3m.min-1 >3m/s2; 16.9AU versus 12AU). Although the smallest format did not replicate the high-velocity demands of matches, the results confirmed their efficacy in providing significant neuromuscular load during the training week, which may then be supplemented by high-intensity interval running in order to gain exposure to more maximal speed work. In summary, the data presented provide valuable information from GPS and inertial sensor microtechnology which may then be used to understand training better to manipulate types of load according to physical conditioning objectives. For example, a library of resources to direct planning of drills of varying cardiovascular, neuromuscular and perceptual load can be created to give more confidence in session outcomes. Combining external and internal load data of common soccer training drills, and their application across different phases and training objectives may give coaches a powerful tool to plan and periodize training.

The institutions of the European Union (EU) have been involved in football-related matters for more than 30 years without having a direct competence in sport. This apparent paradox is the starting point of this thesis, which investigates the origin, development and consequences of EU policies on football. The EU interventions in football issues are examined through a conceptual framework based on models of agenda-setting and multilevel governance. This thesis draws on qualitative research through primary sources, mainly semi-structured interviews and official documents. The most important policy initiatives and decisions of the EU on football matters can be grouped under three headings: freedom of movement for workers, football broadcasting and football governance. EU institutions did not become involved in football matters by their own volition, but as a result of their responsibilities to adjudicate in legal disputes related to freedom of movement for workers and competition policy. The commercialisation of professional football especially over the last few decades generated internal conflicts in the governance of football that were only resolved with recourse to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The EU has acted as an alternative policy venue for football stakeholders wishing to challenge the decisions of football federations. Thus, the EU and football appear as two systems of multilevel governance that have coexisted in parallel for some time but have since clashed as a result of the instrumentalisation of EU venues by football stakeholders. The policies of the EU on football are a compromise between two different visions of the game. Whereas football was initially introduced onto the EU agenda only in economic terms through the ECJ and the Commission, the EU has subsequently developed a more holistic and nuanced vision of football that takes into account its wider social and cultural values. The intervention of the Member States and the European Parliament, at the request of football governing bodies, facilitated the further evolution of EU policies on football. As a result of all these processes, the authority of federations such as the international football federation (Fédération Internationale de Football Association, FIFA) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has been diffused in favour of a horizontal network of governance that includes representatives from players, clubs and leagues.

The focus of this thesis is the representation of football, as sport and culture, within the medium of the digital game. Analysing its three sub-genres - the televisual, the extreme and the management genre. This dissertation outlines how each configures, incorporates, rejects or ignores certain conventions, values and practices connected to the socio-cultural system of the sport, and the wider sport-media complex in its representational and ludic system. Though the marketing literature surrounding these games often makes claims to their simulational quality, these products will be shown to present very particular, dissimilar and above all ideologically loaded versions of the sport they claim to impartially represent. In an evolution of Baudrillard's (1983) concept of the simulacrum, these digital games will be revealed as euphemisms for sport, as inoffensive representations of something that may in reality be considered to offensive, or too harsh for inclusion into a marketable product. Also central to this thesis is the increasingly trans-medial nature of sport consumption, as the post-modern consumer does not simply distinguish between the various media he or she consumes and the 'reality' of the mediated object; indeed it is the mediation of the sport that now constitutes the dominant interpretation of its conventions and values. To quote John Fiske, the media no longer supply 'secondary representations of reality; they affect and produce the reality they mediate' (1994, p.xv).

South African political elites framed the country’s successful bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup in terms of nation-building, evoking imagery of South African unity. Yet, a pre-season tournament in 2008 featuring the two glamour soccer clubs of South Africa, Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, and the global brand of Manchester United, revealed a racially fractured soccer fandom that contradicted these notions of national unity through soccer. This thesis examines the racial divisions in Johannesburg soccer fandom, exploring the continuing wider importance of racial identities in post-apartheid South Africa. Sport is not merely a leisure activity but a space in which everyday identities are negotiated and contested. Specifically, soccer in South Africa has been a site in which racial divisions have been both entrenched and subverted, spanning the colonial era to the present day. However, in focusing on race, this thesis seeks to move beyond simple binaries that have characterised the debates on identity in South Africa; particularly race versus class. Race, through the perspective of creolisation, becomes unfixed and fluid. However, despite reinterpreting race, racial divisions still scar the post-apartheid city. Extensive ethnographic fieldwork with the supporters’ organisations of Kaizer Chiefs, Bidvest Wits and Manchester United football clubs in Johannesburg draws out narratives of fandom often marginalised in Africanist scholarship. Drawing on wide-ranging sources including participant observation, semi-structured interviews and local newspapers, themes of racial difference and otherness emerge. The divided Johannesburg soccer landscape reinforced feelings of disenfranchisement and marginalisation in everyday life from the predominantly white Manchester United supporters while the exclusively black Kaizer Chiefs constructed the domestic game as a black cultural space. While Bidvest Wits offers a symbolic case of multi-racial interaction, certain supporters began to challenge such fractures; some United supporters showed interest in attending domestic games while the Chiefs supporters viewed the researcher as a conduit to attracting these white supporters. Furthermore, the national euphoria generated during 2010 World Cup did temporarily alter perspectives of the city and how the supporters travelled through it, challenging perceived barriers. Yet, themes of exclusion and division remained, brought back to the fore after the tournament.

The use of sport to tackle a variety of social challenges, a strategy referred to as Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), is on the rise. Despite the recent attention given to the social value of sport to society few studies have investigated the relationship between sport, homelessness and poverty. This investigation explores such a relationship and in doing so helps to address a gap in existing sport in society research. In addressing such a gap this exploration takes its lead from Amartya Sen’s capability approach. Informed theoretically and methodologically by the capability approach this research provides an original thesis that considers the ways in which sport contributes to the expansion of the human capabilities of a select number of homeless street soccer players. The purpose of this thesis is to provide an original piece of research that advances our knowledge of sport in society and more specifically sport, homelessness and poverty. It uses a qualitative, collective case study design in which the participants of two social enterprises, which use street soccer to help overcome homelessness and its associated effects, were interviewed in order to understand the specific ways in which street soccer has helped to develop capabilities in the sense that Sen used this term. During the research process the notion of pathways with different entry and exit points emerged and became central to this work. This thesis has built on this idea through its use of two street soccer organisations: The Homeless World Cup and Street Soccer (Scotland), each of which operates at a different stage of the homeless pathways. By understanding sport as capabilities this research differentiates stages in the development of capabilities and identifies specific capabilities built through sport as separate to those built through the use of street soccer in either a sport plus and plus sport sense. With the increasing use of sport in development initiatives across the globe, it is both timely and necessary to consider new ways of understanding its social benefits. In the capability approach there exists the potential not only to better understand the ways in which sport interacts with and shapes individuals, communities and societies but also to better inform the use of sport for the purposes of development in the future. This thesis proposes that understanding sport as the development of capabilities is useful not least because of the universality of the new approach to considering and appreciating the social benefits gained in and through sport but also to alert sociologists and other disciplines to the value of Amartya Sen’s capability approach.

Soccer matches have a typical duration of 90 min. However, when matches are drawn in some knockout cup scenarios and an outright winner is required, an additional 30 min period, termed extra-time (ET), is played. The performance and physiological responses to 90 min of soccer-specific exercise have been extensively investigated, however; there is a paucity of research investigating the demands of 120 min of soccer-specific exercise (i.e., matches requiring ET). Accordingly, the aims of this thesis were 1) to elucidate professional practitioner perceptions of ET, 2) to investigate the performance and physiological responses during prolonged actual and simulated match-play, and 3) to examine the influence of a nutritional intervention on performance during ET. To actuate aim one, a qualitative approach (i.e., an online survey) was used to assess practitioner perceptions of ET and their current applied practices. To accomplish aim two, quantitative research projects utilising performance analysis techniques and an analogue of match-play (simulated soccer match) were used. To actuate aim three, the same analogue of match-play was used to investigate the effect of carbohydrate-electrolyte gels ingested prior to ET on performance and physiology. Practitioners generally account for ET when preparing and recovering players and the majority (91%) of practitioners want research to be conducted on ET. Using notational analysis, reductions in technical performance (i.e., passing and dribbling) were observed during ET. Furthermore, when using a simulated match protocol, perturbations in both performance and physiology compared to the previous 90 min of exercise occur. Specifically reductions in both physical (i.e., sprint speeds) and technical (i.e., shooting speed) parameters, taxing of endogenous fuel sources, dehydration, and shifts in substrate utilisation (i.e., a move towards fat oxidation as a fuel source) were observed. The ingestion of carbohydrate-electrolyte gels prior to ET improved dribbling performance, however; this intervention was unable to attenuate decrements in physical performance and hydration status. In conclusion, ET influences both soccer-specific performance and physiological responses. In agreement with practitioners working in professional soccer, more research is required to investigate the efficacy of interventions (particularly hydro-nutritional interventions) that improve performance and ameliorate perturbations in physiology and metabolism.

The concepts of Athletic Identity (Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder,1993) and identity (Erikson, 1950, 1968) both carry notions of having a clear sense of self definition. Applied practitioners in elite professional football settings (e.g. Holt & Dunn, 2004; Harwood, 2008; Nesti & Littlewood, 2010; Nesti, 2013) have championed the notion that individuals who possess a clear sense of self, (generally) cope with the demanding nature of first team football, and the daily challenges that arise from their chosen profession (i.e., injury, de-selection). Conversely, a small number of researchers have consistently argued that professional football club culture may not support the development of a clear sense of identity in (young) players, as it has been described as espousing notions of power, dominance, authority and insecurity (see e.g. Parker, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2001; Roderick, 2006, 2006a). The present thesis explores the role of identity, the impact of football club culture on its formation, and its importance in the career trajectory of youth team footballers. Across three distinct studies, this thesis explores the concepts of Athletic Identity, identity, and the creation of club culture within youth and professional football. Study one used a cross sectional approach, within and across levels of play along with distinct situational, demographic variables to assess any differentiating factors in Athletic Identity in 168 (N = 168) youth team footballers. Football club explained 30% of the variance in exclusivity among players (p = .022). Mean social identity was significantly higher for those players in the first year of their apprenticeship compared to the second year (p = .025). The range of variance for exclusivity amongst players suggested it was the cultural climate created at each individual football club that impacted this subscale of Athletic Identity. Study Two used a qualitative approach with the aim of critically exploring the perceptions of practitioners in relation to; ideal player characteristics, working practices, organisational culture and environmental conditions. These facets are influenced by practitioners within youth development programmes, all of which contribute to shaping a player’s identity (Erikson, 1968). A total of 19 youth development practitioners were interviewed during data collection. Practitioners provided an explicit and clear blueprint of the ideal player characteristics required for successful upward transition, including, self belief, dedication and self awareness, which are synonymous with notions of identity. Finally, Study three used a case study approach to critically examine how players’ experiences of a professional football environment and culture served to shape their identity and allows them to cope with critical moments. A Championship football club served as the case study in which 4 players were interviewed 3 times over the course of one season. Findings were represented as narrative stories of each player. Findings suggested that having a clear sense of identity provided players with a platform for resilience and perseverance throughout a range of critical moments. In summary, it is vital that appropriate internal (club) and external (affiliated organisations) strategies are developed and integrated into practice to ensure that players develop a clear sense of identity and meaning. It is essential that this transcends the professional football domain for players to have the best possible platform for career progression and career termination.

This study investigated the social and psychological impact on girls of playing competitive football and explored whether football is associated with their mental wellbeing. Football was identified as an appropriate focus for exploring the link between sport and wellbeing because of its status as the UK’s national sport and its role in gender socialisation processes. The study also explored the barriers to girls’ participation in football and discusses these findings in relation to gender/structural inequalities. The study contributes new knowledge about girls’ agency, desires, resilience and strategies for overcoming adversity and ways in which girls challenge the universality of assumptions about feminine body image. METHOD Girls aged 10-16 from a Centre of Excellence and a local community football club (n=68) and their parents (n=66) completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. The questionnaires were analysed using SPSS. Smaller groups of girls were selected for focus group interviews, which were analysed using template analysis. Focus group questions were derived from three sources: consultations with parents, coaches and the representatives of the Football Association, the literature review and the SDQ results. FINDINGS This study was set within an interpretative paradigm with three theoretical strands being used to interpret results: gender, sport and agency; social context and structural inequalities; resilience, overcoming adversity and positive psychology. The study found a number of social barriers to girls playing football and demonstrated that they play football because they have agency and are self-motivated to do so. Although it is difficult to determine a causal relationship, girls who play football were found to have good self-efficacy and positive indicators for good mental health. The study sample seemed able to resist external social pressures to conform to gendered body image stereotypes that limit girls’ involvement in sport and which can contribute to low self-esteem. The primary incentive for girls who maintain their involvement in football centres on making and keeping friends. Girls who play football have in general positive explanatory styles and an optimistic nature. CONCLUSION There are benefits for girls who play football. Girls are motivated to play football but need the opportunities to participate. Access to physical activity such as football should therefore be promoted for girls. There is a pressing need to address the under-representation of women’s sport in the media and to challenge the status quo in school sport. A commitment to equal resources, equal time and space in the playground, and equal treatment by teachers and coaches is overdue. Furthermore, the study raises questions for social workers. An appreciation of the importance of resilience is embedded in Social Work professional competence requirements and the study suggests that supporting the development of resilience in girls, through access to physical activities that challenge gendered prescriptions and promote agency, can improve protection from adversity.