Technical skill not athleticism predicts an individual’s ability to maintain possession in small-sided soccer games

ABSTRACT Team sports such as soccer require individuals to play specific team roles, and success in each role is likely to be associated with a certain combination of traits. Despite this, scientific protocols for talent identification do not consider the diversity of roles played by individual players in a team. Here, we aimed to identify those players suited to the maintenance of possession by testing each individual’s sprinting, dribbling, passing, athleticism, and fitness, and showing how these traits were related to success in a small-sided possession game (4 vs 3). Passing and dribbling performance but not athleticism were the best predictors of game success. On average, 79.4 ± 8.0% of passes were successful, and those players that made a higher number of successful passes were significantly more likely to receive/possess the ball (r = 0.91; P < 0.0001). Passing success in games was best predicted by performance in dribbling and passing tests but not sprinting, fitness, or running anaerobic sprint test (F2,23 = 20.74; adjusted r2 = 0.61; P < 0.001). By identifying those traits associated with other game-specific activities, one could further improve talent identification protocols that reflect the diversity of player-types and help design individual-specific training regimes.