Seeing bad luck: player participation to tactical video analysis in amateur football

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the skills involved in gaining insight from visual evidence in tactical video analysis. Using multimodal analysis of video recordings of tactical video analysis in a case from amateur football, our findings re-specify existing scholarship into video-based coaching by giving content to the idea of seeing as a scaffold for player engagement. We identify four methods in which participants use video data in interaction: the first involves using still images to give a label to the episode; the second is about making apparent what is seen on video through bodily re-enactment; the third entails zooming out from specific aspects of play to consider a larger spatial configuration while the fourth consists in considering the event within the extended temporal development of the action. Contrary to accounts of video-sessions whereby talk is dominated by the coach, the polyphony of voices and multiple ways of seeing captured by these methods concur to suggest a view of tactical video analysis as a complex social system of which the coach is but one member.

KEYWORDS:

• Tactical video analysis
• ethnomethodology
• coaching

Tactical video analysis, the role of coach and the study of social interaction

This paper analyses the practice of tactical video analysis in football. During post-match tactical video analysis sessions, a football coach uses video replays of matches to provide feedback to their players with the aim of improving their future performance. Our analysis focuses on the skills and abilities needed to gain insights from the visual evidence used on tactical video analysis. While we understand that simply sharing video analysis does not have salvific effects on the players’ future performance (Carling, Williams, & Reilly, 2005), we argue that visual data is not self-evident; rather, seeing and understanding what there is to be seen in a video clip requires a significant amount of interpretative work.

Tactical video analysis in football is a perspicuous setting to give content to the idea that the coaches’ “actual work with athletes involves the observation (and subsequent evaluation) of the latter performances and actions” (Corsby & Jones, 2020, p. 348). In the case selected for this paper, the coach shows on video an event from the recording of the previous match. He then pauses it to point out a subset of aspects within the still image and eventually provides an interpretation among the many available. As we will show later, the interpretation can be also reconfigured or challenged by other participants as the video session unfolds. It turns out that the meaning of the event in the video-clip, far from being immediately obvious to the viewers (Goodwin, 1996), needs to be collectively elaborated and jointly constructed. In other words, the meaning of the event on video is the outcome of the participants’ analysis and not a self-evident truth available from the beginning. It is only through a reflexive relation between video replay of what happened on the pitch and its descriptions that participants can make sense of it as a whole.

We recognise that tactical video analysis holds significance also in the light of the challenges posed by emerging analytical techniques to the traditional “eye test” - the quintessential tool of seasoned football coaches (Campagnolo, 2022). Among these techniques, video analysis is the most established method (Memmert & Rein, 2018). Video is considered to be a powerful tool in the hands of coaches, enabling them to pinpoint both positive and negative aspects of players’ performance. Through acts of “noticing” (Corsby & Jones, 2020; Jones, Bailey, & Thompson, 2013), the coach can bring to the foreground and make apparent what might be otherwise ignored and pass unnoticed. In the coaching literature, video analysis is often portrayed as a one-way activity dominated by authority and power, where the coach analyses the match presenting players with their shortcomings. This article presents a different view, whereby the meaning of what is seen is made recognisable to others through a composition of multiple perspectives and by sharing discordant points of view.

In particular, we will be looking at the action of pausing play during video-feedback. As a micro-structure of coaching practice (Hall, Gray, & Sproule, 2016), stoppages have been studied more during practice time (Smith & Cushion, 2006) than as part of video sessions in the classroom. Good stoppages in training are fast, focused on one single idea and used for corrections that can be applied right away. In our case, we argue that pausing play is not aimed at corrections: play cannot be corrected as the event happened in the past. More than just to impart corrections, such stoppages are used to enhance awareness of what has happened on the pitch. In line with the idea of the coach as educator (Jones, 2006), we stress that player learning in the case of tactical video analysis is more a matter of shared situational reading than a matter of knowledge acquisition (Jones, Thomas, Nunes, & Viotto Filho, 2018).

A football coach conducts video analysis with the purpose of reviewing episodes of the previous match that need to be addressed either because players did something wrong or for the reason to highlight something good. In the former case, the coach will criticise one or more players, while in the latter praise will be given. For this purpose, the coach (often with the help of a match analyst who oversees video recording and editing) selects the clips to be shown to the players. As we are reminded by Jones, Bailey and Thompson in their work on the role of noticing in coaching “we cannot make an indication without drawing distinctions” (Jones, Bailey, & Thompson, 2013, p. 277). What is at stake in tactical video analysis is making distinctions between player’s knowledge of what to do in particular occasions (knowledge-that) and player’s knowledge of how to deal with particular contingent situations (knowledge-how) (Arminen & Simonen, 2021; Ryle, 1946). When criticism is implied, the review is either about a failure in “knowledge-that” (i.e. positioning on the pitch, anticipating an opponent, etc.), or a failure in “knowledge-how” a skill should have been executed (for instance, anticipating the opponent by heading the ball away instead of controlling it with the chest). It often ensues that one or more players are singled out to show they are responsible for lacking either knowledge-that or knowledge-how.

In our case, we discuss one episode in which the coach draws the attention of his players to an incident that later led to conceding a penalty. The coach initially defines the episode as a case of “bad luck”, for which no attribution of individual responsibility for lack of knowledge-that or knowledge-how is raised. The event and its context are then analysed from different points of view by the coach in concert with the players. Rather than simply acquiring new “knowledge”, our analysis shows that as part of video analysis players adopt a different stance towards the event, linked to viewing themselves within the broader spatial context of the pitch and as part of the temporal unfolding of the action.

The article is inspired by ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967) and conversation analysis (Heritage, 2005), which are naturalistic studies of the methods people actively use to organise and structure social interaction with others and the world they inhabit. In order to study coaches’ actual behaviour during video-feedback sessions, instead of relying on interviews (Raya-Castellano, Reeves, Littlewood, & McRobert, 2020) or on ethnographic notes (Brümmer, 2018, 2019), we use video analysis of video practices (Broth, Laurier, & Mondada, 2014). Through multimodal analysis (Mondada, 2013, 2016), using video recordings of tactical video analysis, we point to the sequential constitution of sense-making, where coach and players together reach a shared understanding of the events. In particular, we analyse the ways in which the coach selects, identifies, and defines what to look at in a still image; how the episode is made explicit and observable through bodily re-enactments; how an alternative interpretation is derived via video replay; and how the original interpretation derived from the still is then challenged based on a reconstruction of the temporal development of the event.

Studies of video practice in coaching

Studies of tactical video analysis are a minority topic in coaching literature (Groom & Nelson, 2012) and have tended to focus on how players cope with video feedback (Groom & Cushion, 2005) and on describing the context where video feedback delivery occurs (Wright, Carling, Lawlor, & Collins, 2016). Others have explored coaches’ behaviour during team-based video-feedback (Raya-Castellano, Reeves, Littlewood, & McRobert, 2020) going as far as arguing that video-based feedback is political (Booroff, Nelson, & Potrac, 2016). Invariably and despite the widespread adoption of video analysis at all levels of football, existing research on video-feedback concerns coaching at either youth academies or professional environments (Groom & Cushion, 2004). Based on thematic analysis of interviews or transcriptions of conversations, these studies also share a logo-centric conception of player–coach interaction. This has consequences for the understanding of power dynamics as well as for the appreciation of the role of embodied action with tools other than language, including video. In Groom, Cushion, and Nelson (2012) for example, the focus is on social power. By only attending to talk-in-interaction, however, the understanding of interactional dynamics remains strictly dyadic (coach-player) and the relationship between speaker (coach) and hearer (player) profoundly asymmetrical, with a very active speaker complemented by a very passive hearer. As also noticed by Corsby and Jones (2020, p. 355), a number of investigations into elite-level coach–athlete interaction describe cases of video sessions where a forceful and authoritarian coach is showing desire for control over athletes (Cushion & Jones, 2006; Jones, Armour, & Potrac, 2004; Potrac, Jones, & Armour, 2002). While acknowledging the conflictual element that can emerge in video sessions, Taylor, Potrac, Nelson, Jones, and Groom (2017) and Nelson, Cushion, and Potrac (2014) also touch upon how athletes welcome opportunities to interact with coaches and fellow athletes during video-sessions. This signposts towards the potential for productive interaction between coaches and athletes during video-based coaching sessions.

Linking to Taylor, Potrac, Nelson, Jones, and Groom (2017) and Nelson, Cushion, and Potrac (2014) findings, we conjecture that the overwhelming attention in the coaching literature for asymmetry is more a shortcoming of the methodology used to analyse it than a fact of interaction. As well as using interviews to study the psychological impact of video feedback sessions on players (Groom & Cushion, 2005; Groom, Cushion, & Nelson, 2011; Magill, Nelson, Jones, & Potrac, 2018; Middlemas & Harwood, 2018), we concur with Gibson and Lehn (2020) about the importance of using other methods that focus more comprehensively on micro-behavioural actions beyond language. Indeed, by looking at institutional talk (Heritage, 2005, p. 106) through the lens of multimodality i.e. the environmental coupling of video technology, body and talk (Mondada, 2013, 2016), interactional dynamics is re-oriented in ways that are more participated: definitions of participants continue to matter but what is available on screen also matters. Tools such as video make possible a more distributed access to the object of concern (Goodwin, 1996).

Video-assisted debriefings in football (especially at amateur level) are not as straightforward as in other professional domains where the standardisation of practice is at stake for reproducibility (Goodwin, 1994, pp. 608–615), accountability (Goodwin, 1994, pp. 615–626) or safety reasons (Roth & Jornet, 2015). This paper therefore locates the precepts of “professional vision” within the ill-codified context of amateur football, where there is no assessment model that can be explicitly referred to or univocal coding scheme through which images can be filtered through. The paper complements an earlier study in which the authors looked at the use of video in broadcasted sport punditry (Fele & Campagnolo, 2021). While audience reaction remained invisible to that analysis, by way of better video-ethnography access (Heath, Hindmarsh, & Luff, 2010; Knoblauch & Schnettler, 2012) this paper also accounts for how players in the audience responded to the video material being presented for tactical analysis.

Ethnomethodology has inspired important insights in coaching (Corsby, 2021; Corsby & Jones, 2020; Corsby, Jones, & Lane, 2022; Corsby, Jones, Thomas, & Edwards, 2023; Evans, 2017a, 2017b; Evans & Fitzgerald, 2017; Evans & Lindwall, 2020; Evans & Reynolds, 2016; Jones & Corsby, 2015), sports (Burke, Sparkes, & Allen-Collinson, 2008; Jenkings, 2013, 2017; Macbeth, 2012; Meyer & Wedelstaedt, 2022; Sánchez García & Liberman, 2021) and football (Fele, 1997). Yet, despite the invitation by Phoenix (2010) to adopt visual methods for the study of physical culture in sport and exercise sciences, the coaching literature still needs more accounts focusing on the role of video in tactical analysis in naturalistic situations.

Theory & method

Our case is based on video analysis conducted by a coach of Seconda Categoria – the eighth level of Italian football – who regularly reviewed footage of the team’s matches throughout the season. The football team is from the University one of the authors is affiliated with. This facilitated with access to the video sessions including obtaining informed consent. The reason for selecting this case is also that we wanted to look specifically at how amateur coaches approach video-feedback. At football clubs of higher leagues, there would have been a match analyst doing the job of producing (if not delivering) video-feedback instead of the coach. In this case, it is the coach doing both the job of editing clips and delivering feedback, doing so without relying on any institutionalised system of inscriptions. The coach is indeed without formal tactical video analysis training: this factor was important in our ambition to contribute to the coaching literature with an account of tactical sessions as a case of “vernacular video analysis” (Tuma, 2012). Between April and May 2022, we recorded approximately 10 h of these technical sessions. During each session, the coach selected specific clips to discuss with the players, highlighting both positive and negative moments from recent matches. The dedicated midweek sessions lasted around 2 h, with 1 h devoted to each half of the team.

The clips used in these sessions are from video recorded at the club grounds. Only one camera is used, and filming is done with a continuous take from one camera angle, which is a view from the stands with the tripod positioned at approximately halfway line. The camera is fixed and followed the development of the action on the pitch. The aim of the occasional cameraman is to capture play while also taking care to include wider areas of the pitch rather than focusing too closely on where the ball is.

Video has been used as a research tool in the social sciences (Heath, Hindmarsh, & Luff, 2010; Knoblauch, Schnettler, Raab, & Soeffner, 2006) to capture additional details of participation such as the reference of deictics. Referring to the same research tradition inspired by ethnomethodology and multimodality (Mondada, 2013, 2016), in this article we use video recordings of match video analysis as well as audio recordings (Groom, Cushion, & Nelson, 2012).

Our own recordings of the video session are undertaken using two cameras, a Panasonic HC-VX1, pointing mainly the screen, and a GoPro camera, pointing the coach and part of the players in the audience. Only a subset of players is captured by the camera but all their voices are audible and included in the transcripts used in the paper.

We selected a particular episode in which the team conceded a penalty. The coach and some players discuss a duel where an opponent beats one of their players (see below “The sequence”). The interest for us is in the way this particular episode involving the ball bouncing off the shin of the player was initially interpreted as involving “bad luck”. However, during the discussion, matters of knowledge and execution were brought forward as it became clear that the player also had some responsibility. As the new interpretation emerges additional skills to read visual data become apparent, involving participants to see different aspects of the event and to appreciate its positioning in the temporal development of the action. Additionally, in the new interpretation, another player is found responsible for the outcome, showing how the single episode is best viewed as a matter of collective responsibility.

In the remainder of this paper, we will analyse the ways in which what happened on the pitch is articulated in a reflexive relation between the step-by-step construction of what must be seen in the video and the glossing of its sequential description (Garfinkel & Sacks, 1986). The articulation of multiple levels of meaning helps make apparent in as much detail the ingenuous vernacular work that takes to ascertain, beyond video evidence, what “really” happened (Pollner, 1987) on the pitch. Video clip and verbal description alone are not enough to provide the complete account of the event. On the contrary, describing what exactly happened on the pitch is a task for the interaction between participants in the video session. It is this task that we now turn to analyse.

Analysis

The focus of the talk between the coach and the players revolves around the following sequence of actions (see Figures 1–9). A and B are the two players competing for the ball. They both stand by the line of the penalty area. A is the player in white shorts (the attacking team), while B is the player with black shorts (the defending team). As we will learn later, the ball arriving to player A comes from a free kick from the halfway line on the 9th minute of the match.

Figure 1. The ball is arriving to a from the free kick from the free kick.

Figure 2. A controls the ball.

Figure 3. The ball arrives to.

Figure 4. The ball bounces off B.

Figure 5. Ball comes back to A.

Figure 6. A controls the ball.

Figure 7. B tackles a.

Figure 8. A wins the duel.

Figure 9. B is off.

What happens after this sequence is that player A squares the ball into the box. A penalty is conceded and the opponent team scores a goal. The following discussion is related only to what happened in this sequence, not the penalty.

Overall, the video-feedback session is about what could have been done better when defending that free kick. The point is to agree among participants upon what happened in the sequence. The conversation concerning the event lasts about six minutes and half. The actual footage being considered lasts about 12 s. The footage is replayed five times during the timeframe considered. In our analysis, we have focused only on four key moments of the discussion. Each provides additional nuances to “stoppage” situations in video-feedback. In the first, play is paused to better invite to look at the screen one particular duel between two players. In the second, a late “stoppage” triggers a bodily re-enactment of the action and invites a better appreciation of what was on the screen. The third key moment captures a player questioning the initial interpretation of the event. The fourth and last shows what could happen if the episode is viewed in its temporal unfolding from where it started. Let’s begin with the first one.

Bad luck

The coach invites the assistant to play the footage: the video shown is to the right of Figure 10 The attacking team take a free kick from the centre of midfield towards the left side of the field. We know from the transcript below that this was a situation the defending team was prepared for, as they knew the opponents often play this way.

Figure 10. The coach points to the beginning of the episode, the free kick by the attacking team.

The coach asks to pause the video when the ball lands to the right corner of the penalty area defended by his team. Pointing his finger to the player in focus, he begins to describe what happened.

Figure 11. The coach points to where the ball arrived from the free kick.

The transcript.

Excerpt 1. 218–229 (0:43–1:04) – “bad luck”

1 Coach allora (.) vedete c’è il calcio, adesso fermati, (.) okay. now (.) you see there is the freekick, stop now, okay

2         qui c’èun po’ di sfiga nel senso che Mauro aveva letto bene here there is some bad luck in the sense that MAURO read it well

3         la cosala sapevamo bene (0.5) we knew it well

4         eh Elia (0.4) eh Elia

5         erarientrato sul loro terzino (0.5) was tracking theirfullback

6   quindi eravamo messi (.)splendidamente bene therefore we were wonderfullypositioned

The coach begins assessing the situation by commenting the position of his players. “Mauro” (line 2, player B as per earlier description) is the right-back that should mark the opposition winger (player A as per earlier description). The players are well positioned, according to the coach, including Mauro’s teammate, Elia (line 4), who is tracking their full-back. See Figure 12:

Figure 12. The players mentioned by the coach in the episode discussed.

Mauro was unable to be present during the video session that day. As a result, the analysis of what happened in the episode occurred in the absence of the player who was involved in it. Elia was in the audience but has no role in the episode, except this early mention to his position in tracking their full back. The coach asks to pause the video (line 1) when the ball is between Mauro and the opposition winger (Figure 12). Although the outcome of the tackle cannot be seen from the still, participants know what will happen next (the players in the audience know it as they played that match): the winger wins the duel, squares the ball into the box and a penalty is conceded. The coach says that losing the duel was a bit of “bad luck” (line 2).

Far from being transparent, video requires ingenious vernacular analytical work. For example, it has to be stopped at relevant moments. The still can provide a pointing device for the analysis. In the absence of other video marking tools such as those described in our earlier work (Fele & Campagnolo, 2021) it is by such stoppage features that the coach can enhance and amplify the events analysed. The coach augments this affordance by pointing his finger to the screen to attract attention to specific sub-sections of the picture. Stoppages such as this create occasions for questioning details that would be lost in the temporal unfolding of video.

If the players’ task in this instance is exercising the sense of vision, the coach is the one who mobilises the viewers’ senses to form a perception of what is to be seen. Perceptions are formed not only in terms of mere descriptions of the visual elements but also in the form of interpretations, providing further layers of meaning to the event. The coach refers to “bad luck” straight after pausing play, using an interpretation to gloss what the players in the room are going to witness on video. At this initial level, the meaning of the episode is offered in a way that excludes any reference to intentionality, i.e. whether the bounce was a mistake. Also, the interpretation of the episode as “bad luck” is given by the coach before showing the clip, as a way of prospective framing the video evidence. The coach in this instance gives the interpretation of the action as “bad luck” as an “advance organiser” (Ausubel, 1968) i.e. the meaning of the event is anticipated before being actually shown. It is a way to direct the viewer’s attention to the essence of what is coming. The coach goes on talking for 2 min without mentioning “bad luck” again. Indeed for “bad luck” to work as an advance organiser, the ground should be first cleared from alternative interpretations. In determining the meaning of the episode as “bad luck”, the coach first notes that there is no knowledge failure, i.e. failure related to what the player should be doing in similar cases: Mauro read it well (line 2).

In addition, the coach points out that each player knew where to be on the pitch (Figure 11). He refers to having worked on this situation earlier in training and that the players expected the free kick to be taken in this way (line 3). He finally says that positions were kept “wonderfully” (line 6). If it’s not a knowledge failure (i.e. a failure related to how to position and what to expect in similar occasions) then what remains to blame is indeed something out-of-control such as “bad luck”.

“The shin of the opponent”

Collectively orientating to the identification of certain visual data does not necessarily mean automatic accord on the meaning of it. Discussion regarding further layers of meaning remains open and any agreement should be reached as the outcome of further analytical work. In this case, the agreement on what (really) happened on the pitch requires closer scrutiny. In the excerpt below, the coach returns to the episode and asks for the video to be restarted from the point where it had been stopped (line 7) to then ask to pause it again a few seconds later (line 10).

Excerpt 2. 248–279 (1:29–2:08) – “the shin of the opponent”

7 Coach vai. go ahead

8          (2.0) ((video runs))

9         ed ecco che appunto loro invece riescono a mettere il cross and now they manage to put the cross in

10       ma per sbaglio, cioè, alla fine, se noi andiamo- ferma ferma (0.6) but by mistake, that is, if we go – stop stop ((video stops))

11         cioè (.) se avete visto no? la reazione, lì è stato Mauro che that is, if you have seen the reaction, MAURO has-

12         si è proprio- il rimpallo che è andato (.) it has- the rebound went […]

19         perché io veramente ero lì davanti, ero lì davanti a me, because I was exactly there, in front of me

20         lui aveva proprio preso il pallone, l’aveva preso bene cazzo he had stopped the ball, he hold it well, fuck

21         l’ha controllato di stinco he controlled it with the shin

22         e è arrivato addosso allo stinco di quell’altro and bounced off the shin of the opponent

23         ed è riuscito a entrare (0.5) and he managed to get through

In this excerpt, the coach explains why this episode can be taken as an example of “bad luck”. The coach is busy giving an account of what was that he labelled “bad luck”. It’s not the content of the image that counts: the two players the coach is pointing to in the still image (right of Figure 13) are not even the ones involved in the event discussed earlier. This is a different type of stoppage. It is not about pointing to where “bad luck” happened exactly as in Figure 11 above. Here pausing play is simply to prevent the clip from moving forward to the next meaningful event (i.e. the penalty). The two fingers are not pointing, they are flicked as in the “spaghetti” gesture to mimic what could be the act to rewind the video to what just happened. The account of what happened is achieved not via reference to the video-clip but through bodily re-enactment. The coach takes the attention off the screen and re-enacts the “bad luck” event accompanying verbal description with body gestures. Using body gestures, the coach mimics the effect of the ball when it bounced off Mauro’s shin. He looks down to his own shin and re-enacts the posture of the player trying to control the ball. With his right arm, the coach shapes the trajectory of the ball arriving to Mauro’s shin and bouncing away (Figures 14–16).

Figure 13. The coach point to the left of the video, where the action happened

Figure 14. The coach looks down to his own chin.

Figure 15. With his right arm, the coach shows the trajactory of the ballarriving.

Figure 16. The coach mimics the ball bouncing away.

A hand clap (Figure 18) visually and aurally reproduces the impact of the ball on the shin. The arms wide open as in a gesture of hopelessness (Figure 17) emphasise that the “rebound” was an accident (line 13). The final palm-up gesture indexes that what the coach is demonstrating are somewhat obvious (Marrese, Raymond, Fox, Ford, & Pielke, 2021) (Figure 19).

Figure 17. Arms wide open as in a gesture of hopelessness.

Figure 18. Hand clap.

Figure 19. The palms-up gesture.

This excerpt shows that when it comes to capture details regarding technical skills or aspects of body shape often involved with individual execution – e.g. the player taking a bad touch – pausing play to re-enact with body and gestures, is a resource that collectively helps “extract the animal from the foliage” (Garfinkel, Lynch, & Livingston, 1981, p. 132). As observed in our previous study on broadcasted tactical analysis, competent conduct of video-based feedback also means appreciating when not to use video for feedback (Fele & Campagnolo, 2021, p. 630). For example, when feedback is about minutiae involving individual players, showing with the body (Tutt & Hindmarsh, 2011) becomes an important resource for the coach to demonstrate his understanding of the unfolding events. By showing with the body and gestures, the coach re-orients the interpretation of the episode by selecting different types of resources, adding embodied actions to spoken words. By bodily displaying the posture of the player and gesturing the bouncing of the ball, the coach makes apparent and obvious his interpretation of the events as “bad luck”.

Interpretation can also occur after the event as a sort of summary, a concluding chapter offering a twist in perspective after people have been given the time to make up their mind as in a murder mystery. This is the case here as the “synthetic total object” - as Husserl (1983-1913): 285–87) would call it – of “bad luck” is questioned by going through “polythetic” acts, the step-by-step constitution of the meaning of this particular event. Via talk and gestures, the coach returns to what was shown earlier on the video as a ready-made object to the different events by which it has been constituted. After re-enacting the event with body gestures, the coach concludes it was a case of “bad luck” (line 13), finishing the argument started earlier.

As well as offering a fine-grained characterisation of the event, the coach in this occasion takes a new epistemic stance towards the event. He appeals in his description to the fact that the event took place right before his eyes (line 19, “I was exactly there, in front of me”). In studies of apprenticeship, it is shown how the visualisation made possible by the camera helps advanced trainees come to perceive relevant objects in the manner experienced by practitioners (Lindwall & Lymer, 2014; Rystedt, Reit, Johansson, & Lindwall, 2013). Having (typically) been players themselves, coaches know that the manner experienced by practitioners is different from the “superior” bird’s-eye view afforded by the tactical camera. That’s the reason for the stoppage in this section. Whether it is body gestures or change in epistemic stance, the aspects of interaction discussed in this section show that video here is no longer the only evidence that can be used to conclusively decide what happened. It is instead just a bookmark, a device that allows pausing play and move to something else without losing track. This “something else” is the coach’s personal experience of what he saw. Here, the ascertainment of what happened on the pitch is not achieved by way of still image and pointing device anymore. It is now based on the coach’s recollection of his experience pitch-side (line 19), closer to where the event took place.

“I don’t see this big amount of bad luck”

Visual data are not self-evident. Jones and Ronglan (2018, p. 907) describe coaches’ work as a “judicious discernment within the cloudy imprecision of practice”. We concur with them, and we see that there is space for the players to engage in the exploration of this cloudy imprecision of practice. The account of an event in terms of video evidence, its verbal (and bodily) description can be challenged on various grounds. Following the coach’s reconstruction of the episode of “bad luck” Paolo, a player in the audience apparently not directly involved in the episode under scrutiny, questions the interpretation provided by the coach. According to Paolo, the issue is not bad luck but a technical error in the defensive body shape taken by Mauro in that occasion. What is bad in the episode is about knowledge that, i.e knowing what has to be done in a particular occasion, not about luck.

Excerpt 3. 318–365 (2:42–3:19) – “I don’t see this big amount of bad luck”

24 Paolo però mister questa but mister this

25          cioè così tanta sfortuna non la vedo perché that is, I don’t see this big amount of bad luck

26          questo comunque sulla fascia ha avuto il tempo di metterla giù because this guy on the wing had time to control the ball

27          e puntare Mauro quindi (0.4) and to find Mauro, then

28          cioè [è stato bravo lui] that is, he has been clever

29 Coach [no no (.) sì sì] no no, yes yes

30 Paolo da un lato però dall’altro forse from one side, but from the other side

31          [(un po’ di reazione)] a bit of reaction

32 Coach [Mauro un po’ (patata)] dici? (0.4) Mauro a bit dumb you say?

33 Paolo eh perché comunque cioè [hai capito sul cambio] gioco, eh, because anyway that is, you know, in the transition

34 Coach [allora i- io-] well I-

35 Paolo un po’ gli devi rompere il cazzo, you have to tease him

36          non dico prendere la palla però: (0.4) I don’t say winning the ball but

The interpretation of the situation as “bad luck” is contested right at the beginning of Paolo’s turn (line 25: “I don’t see this big amount of bad luck”). The evidence is based on what can be observed in the video (line 25: “I don’t see”). Paolo’s perspective is that the attacking player (the player indicated by “A” in our description of the episode) had too much time to control the ball and take on the defender (Mauro) (line 26: “this guy on the wing had time to control the ball”). We do not have a video recording to show whether Paolo was accompanying his claim with body gesture – i.e. pointing – but the deictic “this guy” indicates that the claim is raised based on visual evidence, not just recollection or memory. In any case, Paolo says that the position of his fellow defender (Mauro) was not effective. Mauro gave the opponent too much time to control the ball, instead of squeezing him earlier. The interpretation of “bad luck” is contested here on two levels. On the one hand, the attacking player’s skill is acknowledged (line 28: “he has been clever”): he managed to control the ball well (a case of knowing-how). On the other, Mauro (the defender) wasn’t reactive enough (line 31: “a bit of reaction”). Paolo clarifies that a more aggressive attitude by Mauro would have prevented the attacking player from playing a clean ball (line 33–35: “because, you know, in the transition, you have to tease him”).

Paolo’s perspective in reconstructing the events is thus less focused on the bounce the ball made from one shin to another, or on the static configuration of defending players at the moment when the ball arrives, as per the coach’s reconstruction of the still image. Rather, Paolo is addressing a matter of temporal development, a timely defensive action should have started sooner: when the ball arrives Mauro’s body shape is not ready to squeeze the opponent off the ball. Paolo’s point here is how Mauro approached the transition when the free kick was taken. The conflict in interpretation captured in this episode shows that, as recently noted in a study on VAR (Spitz, Moors, Wagemans, & Helsen, 2018) slow-motion replay has an impact on decision-making. Indeed, the “polythetic” interpretation afforded by the stop-motion reconstruction by physical gestures enacted by the coach afforded the career of the formation of “bad luck” to be interpreted as a single act of “bad luck”. On the contrary, video replay at normal speed made it possible to advance a counter-interpretation based on the temporal unfolding sequence of events on the pitch and the need for a timelier reaction by the teammate.

“If you stay closer to the ball you give him a second more”

The discussion between coach and player until this moment has been focused on an event selected from the video clip regarding the defender Mauro and the opposition winger. The video clip started from the free kick taken from midfield. In order to reach the point he wanted, the coach had to ask the assistant to run the footage until we can see the players involved in the selected event following the free kick. That means that when we start to see Mauro and the opposition winger on video, the starting event and the players involved with the free kick are not visible anymore.

When another player, Giorgio, asks Luca (player and video assistant for the day) to play the clip again from the beginning, the conversation takes an unexpected turn. As well as Mauro, the defender, Giorgio argues there is another player that bears some responsibility. As it turns out indeed Luca in midfield did not do his job. Luca is the closest player to where the free kick is taken. Giorgio has something to say about it:

Excerpt 4 - 472-607 (5:20–6:32) – “if you stay closer to the ball you give him a second more”

67 Giorgio Luca posso chiederti di rimettere dall’inizio scusami Luca can I ask you to replay from the beginning, sorry

68 ((the video runs from the beginning of the episode, the free kick))

69 Giorgio se ti metti davanti alla palla però if you stay closer to the ball

70 lì dai [un attimo di più eh] you give him a second more

71 Luca [sì infatti c’avevo pensato] yes indeed I have thought about that

72 anch’io a [quella cosa] too to that thing

73 Giorgio [forse] quello maybe that

74 Coach forse maybe

75 Giorgio mezzo [secondo, poi forse] half a second, then maybe

76 Luca [mezzo secondo son d’accordissimo] half a second I completely agree

The concern now is with Luca’s position (the midfielder) not Mauro’s (the defender). It is about the free kick taken moments before the episode involving Mauro. Giorgio is observing that Luca did not obstruct the taker. This gave Mauro little time to get into position and defend better (lines 69–70 “if you stay closer to the ball you give him [Mauro] a second more”). This is the still frame of the video sequence being discussed:

Figure 20. Position of the midfield Luca in occasion of the free kick.

We observe that Luca is the closest player to where the free kick is taken. Giorgio notices that Luca walks away and does not obstruct the taking of the free kick in any way (Figures 20–23).

Figure 21. Giorgio walks away from the ball.

Figure 22. Giorgio does not obstruct the taking of the free kick.

Figure 23. The free kick is taken.

This has consequences for Mauro’s incident. Indeed, if Luca had disturbed the free-kick even only for “half a second” (line 75) he might have given Mauro the opportunity to get into a better position. Here, the focus is no longer on whether the initial incident was due to a technical error or bad luck but on an entirely different situation. Giorgio traces the cause back to something that happened at the beginning of the sequence of events; do it better and the outcome could have been different later on. What emerges is a broadening of the perspective in terms of temporal positioning of the players: instead of focusing to the incident in isolation, the invitation is to look to its antecedents.

The episode in this section shows that video also de-centres the player. Because of its specific affordance, when evidentials are drawn from the video, the interpretation tends to widen the scope of the analysis and highlight team level issues. This is evident here when Giorgio, asking to play the footage again, makes the point about Luca having to disturb the taking of the free kick (line 67). According to this interpretation, the explanation for the outcome of the duel should not be confined to Mauro’s bad luck in execution. It is by rewinding the clip to where the action started that Giorgio demonstrates that the issue is not simply about one individual player. Rather, the position of other players earlier on should be looked at to explain what happened. As well as moving from individual to team level, the explanation also shifts away from execution issues to becoming an issue of knowledge. Running the video back and forth, the real cause of what seems “bad luck” is that attacking players did not transition quick enough to defensive tasks.

Coaching, video-feedback and participation

This paper makes the point that despite the recent focus on the role of “observation” (Corsby et al., 2020), current coaching literature still lacks a reflection on the actual management of tactical video analysis. Such reflection can show the social structures which allow such “seeing” within sport coaching and the concrete ways interpretations and readings of an episode are constituted via the environmental coupling of video technology, body and talk. Reciprocally, this paper also notes that when video-feedback is addressed, rather ironically, there is a lack of video analysis about it in practice. Significantly, and beyond mere methodological concerns, the absence of micro details regarding the formation of opinions and interpretations in video-feedback sessions means that the micro-practices involved with video-feedback are not yet adequately addressed in the coaching literature.

As we are reminded by Jones, Bailey and Thompson in their work on the role of noticing in coaching “we cannot make an indication without drawing a distinction” (Jones, Bailey, & Thompson, 2013, p. 277). By examining video-feedback through the lens of multimodality, we showed that the coach’s main task is to select and identify episodes from the match. By making distinctions between knowledge and execution, he provides indications on what can be done better. Through verbal description and body gestures including pointing, the video recording of the game is turned into visual evidence for players to reflect on what could have been done differently. Simultaneously, the very act of interpreting renders visual data susceptible to different perspectives and even contestation.

By focusing on aspects of player participation, our findings also give content to the idea of “seeing” as an opportunity for creativity and engagement. Indeed, it is the heightened sensitivity to what exactly happened on video that raises the possibility for alternative points of view. Similarly, the case of the coach addressing the event as “bad luck” turned out to be a successful strategic interpretation that triggered effervescent participation from players, illustrating the emergent and contingent nature of coaching practice.

Approaches that focus solely on what is said (logo-centric approaches) dominate the current coaching literature on video-feedback but importantly overlook the crucial aspect of when and how something is said. Our contribution highlights the significance of using stoppages as pointing devices for sense-making during video-feedback. Pausing play is all about timing and can only be appreciated through the study of the unfolding interaction.

It could be argued that looking at only few minutes in player–coach interaction over video-feedback is not representative. One episode does not permit to generate a complete understanding of the coaches’ video-based coaching practices and how athletes typically engage in these sessions. A longitudinal study could perhaps contribute to analyse the effectiveness of video-feedback in terms of changing behaviour in the classroom over time, depending on the pedagogical approach adopted by coaching practitioners, the pressures that they, respectively, experience in the role at any given time, as well as power dynamics that develop between coaches and players. However, the analysis of a continuous take of 6 min of conversation gave empirical access to micro-aspects related to the unfolding of the interaction that could not be made apparent in larger studies, for example the positioning of the interpretation in the sequence of talk in interaction and changes of pattern within the session towards more participation.

Focusing on a single episode, we identified four methods in which participants use video data to gain a situational understanding of what happened on the pitch. The first one involves giving a name or label to the episode. In the case we have examined, the coach labelled the episode as a case of “bad luck”, emphasising the element of chance and the absence of individual responsibility in an unfortunate event. The second method involves making apparent that what happened on the pitch was indeed a case of bad luck through bodily re-enactment. Here, the coach highlights micro details of play by impromptu theatrical impersonations of players’ skills in front of an audience.

Moreover, quantifying and comparing words using thematic approaches as done in current studies of video-feedback (García-González et al., 2013) may skew the narrative towards duality and power imbalances. Multi-modality allows to approach video as a third party in the interaction, overcoming a strictly dyadic view of player-coach interaction in video-feedback. Indeed, our analysis shows players interpreting events differently from the coach through the help of video evidence.

The third method allows for the possibility of interpreting the same video data in different ways, emphasising the relation between one player and the opponent from another perspective. This may involve zooming out from a specific aspect of play to consider a larger configuration of play. Indeed through the tactical camera, players see themselves differently i.e. (i) from the outside, as part of a larger picture.

Video data afford players to see differently also because they see themselves again, with hindsight. Video serves as an “intensifier of mind and eye”, prompting players to look again at events from a temporal distance and with heightened attention and scope. The role of temporality is shown in the fourth and final method, when participants consider an even larger configuration of play within the temporal sequential development of the game. In this case, the individual event and its surrounding configuration are explained by what happened earlier, when the opponents initiated the action, of which the episode under discussion is the final moment.

By analysing these methods, we learned that coaching, when using video data, is not solely or even primarily about correcting positions or movements. Rather, it is about facilitating understanding of what “really” happened on the pitch, although only momentarily. This recognition work is a prerequisite for attributing responsibility to players. Simultaneously, the same video data are open to different perspectives which could challenge coaches’ interpretive work. By focusing on the affordances of video in the interaction, we showed that what Raya and Castellano describe as a “two-way feedback process” in tactical video sessions (Raya-Castellano, Reeves, Littlewood, & McRobert, 2020) can become a three-way conversation, where not only the players but also the very act of seeing the same event on screen at different speed and from different angles can alter the coaches’ perspective. Looking at this polyphony of voices and multiple ways of seeing, we concur with adopting “a view of coaching as a complex social system of which the coach is but one (albeit a leading) member” (Jones & Ronglan, 2018, p. 905). In this way, we arguably de-centre the role of the coach yet at the same time we gain a deeper understanding of the situated nature of video analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).