Examination of the Relationship Between Total Running Distance in Football Competition and Result of Competition

Kinematical analysis in football can provide objective information about the player’s physical performance. Particularly, ‘player tracking systems’ are one of the latest sport technologies which enable trainers or coaches to obtain the distance covered by football players in a match, by utilising players positioning and range of velocities. This study aims to examine the relationship between running distances and the result of the game (winning, losing or drawing). 20 young players (16±0,9 years old), height (173,05± 6,36 cm) weight (64,51± 6,44 kg) participated in this study. Correlations were calculated with SPSS 21.0 version using Spearman’s correlation coefficient. As a result of the statistical analysis, a negative relationship was found between the number of goals scored and the total distance travelled during the event, when the game was won (p <0.01). In conclusion, it was observed that in matches which were won the total running distances were less, results indicate that the total running distance of teams cannot be taken as a parameter while determining match results