Bruno Travassos

University of Beira Interior | UBI · Department of Sports Sciences

This study investigates the impact of playing walking football with and without a goalkeeper (GK) on physiological, physical, technical, and perceptual variables in older male adults. A randomized crossover design involved 16 participants engaging in two 5 vs. 5 walking football games: one with a GK (WITH-GK) and one without (WITHOUT-GK). Metrics...

The study aim was to analyse the effects of manipulating the space and number of players in small-sided games on the external load demands of futsal athletes of different age categories. Fifty-six male futsal players from U15, U17, U19, and adult age categories participated. The study lasted 7 weeks. The first week was for familiarization and evalu...

This study examined the impact of the FIFA 11+ warm-up program on both physical performance and small-sided game (SSG) outcomes in youth soccer players. Thirty male players, aged 11 to 15, were randomly assigned to either a FIFA 11+ intervention group (n = 15) or a control group (n = 15). Over two 4-week training periods, separated by a 4-week brea...

Futsal warm-ups are crucial pre-match routines designed to enhance players’ readiness. However, non-starter players inevitably face longer periods of inactivity. This study aimed to investigate the effects of various post warm-up strategies on physical performance of non-starter players in futsal. Thirteen highly trained male futsal players partici...

Citation: Costa, J.A.; Coelho, C.A.; Ferraz, A.; Brito, J.; Guilherme, J.; Seabra, A.; Travassos, B.; Folgado, H.; Gonçalves, B. The Influence of Including Goalkeepers on the Intensity Demands of Walking Football Practice. Sports 2024, 12, 346. Abstract: This preliminary study examined the effects of playing walking football with and without a goal...

Football and futsal are team sports usually taught simultaneously in youth academies in different countries. Based on the athletics skills model (ASM), it was advocated that futsal and football can be considered donor sports to each other. The practice of futsal could promote the specific transfer of skills for football, as the practice of football...

This study examined the effects of playing walking football with and without a goalkeeper (GK) on physiological, physical, technical, and perceptual variables in older men. Twenty participants (67 ± 4.7 years) engaged in two 5 vs. 5 walking football sessions: one WITH-GK and one WITH-OUT-GK, using a randomized crossover design. Heart rate (HR), dis...

The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of futsal training on variables related to body composition and physical performance in student-athletes. This longitudinal study was based on a 12-week training program, and the sample consisted of 34 futsal players in the U17 and U19 categories, competing in a regional championship 2023-2024. The pl...

Abstract Background: Monitoring training load and competition load is crucial for evaluating and improving athlete performance. This study proposes an applied approach to characterize and classify the training task specificity in relation to competition in a top-level rink hockey team, considering external and internal load from training tasks and...

In the context of training load monitoring, the most demanding periods of play (MDPs) have increasingly caught the interest of researchers. However, the MDPs analysis is currently embryonic, raising some conceptual and methodological questions. This current opinion synthesizes the methods used for the MDPs analysis while highlighting conceptual and...

Introduction This study aimed to describe the fixation location and the time of the longer fixation of expert and novice futsal coaches before the ball was in play in futsal set pieces. Methods A total of 10 experts (ages 48 ± 5) and 10 novice coaches (ages 40 ± 7) participated in the study. They observed that 38 video clips were created to mimic...

Introduction: The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of space and number of players manipulation on the external and internal load demands of youth futsal athletes. Methods: Forty-two male U17 players (age = 15.62 ± 0.58 years) from three futsal teams participated in the study. In this cross-sectional study that lasted 8-week, the player’...

This study aimed to investigate the effects of manipulating ball possession directionality (i.e., NO direction, MULTI direction or ONE direction) on the physical, tactical and technical performance of youth football players during small-sided games (SSGs). A total of 18 male youth football players (age: 13.6 ± 0.4 years) participated in four testin...

Small-sided games (SSG) have gained widespread popularity in football over the past decade, providing a platform for sports sciences research to investigate how varying rules impact players' performance from short to long-term perspectives. While this research has contributed to tailoring effective training environments, players from different age...

Technical skill is crucial for success in football, particularly dribbling. There is no consensus on the optimal approach to develop this technical aspect. This study examines the acute effect of analytical and game-based tasks on the reception, passing, and dribbling abilities of young players. Sample: This study involved eighteen under-11 footbal...

The aim of this study was to comprehensively describe and compare the effects of different practice tasks, specifically 4 × 4, 3 × 3, 2 × 2 with goalkeepers (GK) in a 40 × 20 m field court. Forty-two male U17 players (age = 15.62 ± 0.58 years) from three futsal teams participated in the study. The tactical-technical offensive and defensive actions...

The aims of this study were to compare several countermovement jump (CMJ) kinetic variables between professional (PRO) and semi-professional (SEMI-PRO) futsal players and examine the differences amongst playing positions. CMJ performance from 56 male futsal players (25.2 ± 4.8 years; weight: 74.4 ± 6.4 kg) was analysed. Players were separated into...

This study aimed to investigate the training load through external and internal load dynamics across the preparation and competition of a top-level national team during a Rink Hockey European Championship. A non-experimental descriptive method was devel-oped. A two-way mixed design ANOVA and a Spearman correlation test were used to compare and unde...

In recent times, research and technological advancements have opened an unprecedented window of opportunity for sports science to play a pivotal role in the holistic well-being of children [1]. By harnessing the power of sports science, we can not only design, implement, and evaluate sports programs for young athletes but also address broader aspec...

Futsal warm-up is an important pre-match routine that aims to enhance players’ readiness to competition. However, non-starter players will necessarily have a longer inactive period. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different post warm-up strategies on physical performance of non-starter players in futsal. Thirteen highly trained male...

This study aimed to compare the effect on shooting performance between two tasks with different levels of contextual information. Eighteen under‑11 players (9.04±0.68 years) were exposed to four testing sessions, where they performed one of two conditions: a) reduced decision, in which the target player received a backward pass and, within a specif...

This study aimed to compare the use of repetitive and analytical tasks compared to ecologically‑based game tasks in the acute improvement of dribbling performance in young soccer players (n=18, age: 9.04±0.68 years). The initial assessment (pre‑test) consisted of a small‑sided 3v3 game situation. Subsequently, the players underwent one of the follo...

Coaches manipulate rules (i.e., information that defines players’ possibilities of action) to guide them towards specific behaviors. Thus, this study aimed to explore the impact of rules related to collective offensive and defensive behavior on physical and technical performance during Gr+6v6+Gr small‑sided games. Twenty‑two under‑17 players partic...

Background Tracking devices, such as global (GPS) and local (LPS) positioning systems, combined with physiological measurements, have become reliable tools to characterize movement patterns, assessing the external load (EL), internal load (IL), fatigue, and performance of athletes in team sports. This scoping review aims to provide a comprehensive...

Background: Tracking devices, such as global (GPS) and local (LPS) positioning systems, combined with physiological measurements, have become reliable tools to characterize movement patterns, assessing the external load (EL), internal load (IL), fatigue, and performance of athletes in team sports. This scoping review aims to provide a comprehensive...

This study aimed to investigate the impact of ball possession direction on the physical, tactical, and technical performances of youth football players. A total of eighteen under‑14 players (aged: 13.6±0.4 years) participated in three experimental tasks: i) WITHOUT, 4v4 ball possession game with one point being awarded every time a team performs 10...

This study examined the effects of a 3‑month intervention on the dribbling performance of youth football players in both game and analytical tasks. A total of eighteen under‑11 players (age 10.5±0.7 years) participated in the game‑based intervention, which consisted of 36 sessions. The intervention focused on two main tasks: i) 10 minutes of 1v1 sm...

Warm-up is a traditional pre-match routine that aims to enhance players’ readiness to subsequent activity. Manipulating the warm-up structure may be important to enhance acute performance. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different warm-up durations on futsal players’ physical performance. Twelve highly trained male futsal players par...

Players’ capacity to adjust individual tactical actions to the game dynamics are crucial for players’ performance and development. Thus, research exploring strategies to foster the players’ dribbling capacity are crucial. This study aimed to explore the acute effects of two tasks under different levels of degrees of freedom to stress under-10 footb...

The improvement of individual tactical actions in youth players are crucial for long-term success. The use of prescriptive and repetitive approaches versus game-based information for the development of fundamental skills remains in debate without a clear perspective about the best approach (Deuker et al., 2023). Therefore, this study aimed to inves...

Perception plays a crucial role in positioning and performance, as demonstrated by the defensive line adjusting their stance based on the ball location and opponent movements. Coaches can enhance players' perceptual abilities through training tasks that emphasize visual exploration, such as employing visual occlusion to promote stable positioning (...

Coaches working with youth players need to design appropriate training tasks that can enhance their decision-making process based on environmental information (Coutinho et al., 2023), while also fostering their ability to act collectively during offensive and defensive phases of play. However, there is limited research exploring boundary-related ma...

Research in sports science has increasingly focused on exploring how players adapt their performance to different boundary conditions during training tasks. For instance, previous studies have investigated the impact of factors like pitch spatial references (Coutinho et al., 2019) and team tactical systems on players' performance (Baptista et al.,...

The current study aimed to investigate the effects of interchange rotations on players` physical performance during competition, with special reference to high-intensity activity (HIA) according to the playing position. Physical performance data, collected from 19 professional players during seven official matches from the Spanish futsal league usi...

The purpose of this study was to understand the contribution of each performance indicator to evaluate match performance of football referees. Thirty-four elite Referee Match Observers (RMOs) from the Portuguese FA participated voluntarily in the study. From the official assessment sheet of each game, the referee’s game score was categorized in two...

Introduction This study aimed to investigate the physical and individual technical-tactical performance of elite futsal players. Methods Thirteen National Team futsal players (27.4 ± 4.7 years, 70.3 ± 7.6 kg, 176.3 ± 5.5 cm) competed in 15 official matches in three distinct competitions. Session rate of perceived exertion (sRPE) and player load (P...

The aim of this study was to characterize performance patterns of attack and defence of football teams, and the inter-team's relation throughout the game. First and second leg of the Brazilian Cup Final 2018 Under-20 category were recorded using two video cameras. Three hundred twelve attacks and defences sequences in the two football matches were...

Background/aim: Futsal is an intermittent high-intensity indoor team sport that requires frequent bouts of high-intensity efforts interspersed with short-durations of recovery. A greater understanding of the physical demands experienced by players during match-play is critical to informing appropriate training prescription and player management str...

Background/aim: The goal of coaches is to design tasks that improve player performance during competition. To create such scenarios, coaches often vary the difficulty of the task by changing the possible actions and thus the decision-making process (1). Nevertheless, there is little information on how tasks with different levels of decision-making...

Background/aim: In football, training session tasks are designed to improve players' performance under specific tactical systems and collective principles. For that, coaches vary task boundary conditions to amplify opportunities for action (1). Therefore, this study explored how varying the team system and the players' role affected players physica...

Background/aim: Successful performance depends on players' verbal and nonverbal communication with teammates and opponents to engage in goal-directed behaviors according to spatial-temporal relations. Accordingly, some studies have investigated how the emphasis or inhibition of spaces of play, limits of the field or even the color vests changed the...

Objective: This study aimed to describe and characterize injuries sustained by elite male futsal players in Portugal. Design: Prospective cohort study. Setting: Top-tier Portuguese league in the 2019 to 2020 season. Participants: One hundred sixty-seven players from 9 elite/international-level (tier 4) futsal teams. Independent variables:...

Purpose: The aim of the current study was to report the training program and monitoring outcomes of the Portuguese national futsal team during the preparation and competition phases of the FIFA Futsal World Cup Lithuania 2021™. For that, the variations in training load and wellness were measured, as well as their relationship. Methods: The study...

This study aimed to analyse the effects of the numerical configuration of players and court size constraints on futsal small-sided game (SSG) performance difficulty level and player participation. For that, the degree of effectiveness of 6155 offensive actions performed by 59 young players (9–12 years) was investigated in six SSG conditions (2v1a,...

In recent years, physical activity assessment has increasingly relied on wearable monitors to provide measures for surveillance, intervention, and epidemiological research. This present systematic review aimed to examine the current research about the utilization of wearable technology in the evaluation in physical activities of preschool- and scho...

This study aimed to understand how the design of decision-making tasks affects youth football players’ ball control, passing performance, and external load. A total of 16 male youth football players (age: 12.94 ± 0.25 years) competed in various tasks based on the following levels of decision-making: (i) low decision-making (Low DM), which consisted...

This study aimed to characterize the passing patterns that support collective tactical behaviour in football players of different ages (U15, U17, and U19) in different field zones. Two hundred and twenty-eight male players, divided into U15, U17, and U19, participated in the study. Cluster analysis was used to group the passes into three sizes (sho...

Purpose: To investigate the internal training loads of a professional Spanish female futsal team throughout 26 weeks of training including preseason and in-season weeks and verify the impact of training period and/or training load magnitudes on heart-rate variability responses. Furthermore, we aimed to assess, intraindividually, the relationship b...

Previous research has recently shown that high cognitive and somatic anxiety and low self-confidence, before and during sport competitions have a significant correlation with heart rate variability (HRV) changes and can reduce overall athletic performance. Therefore, interventions, such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can be a po...

This study analysed the seasonal variations in futsal players’ physical, physiological, and technical–tactical performance. Eight senior futsal players from the same team were monitored at three time points in the season (beginning of the preseason, middle of the first half of the season, and middle of the second half of the season). A progressive...

Objectives This study examined the peak physical and physiological performance intensities and associated decrements in elite soccer referees during match play. Design Longitudinal study. Method Physical performance variables and heart rate were analyzed during 457 matches across two seasons. Differences between halves, and the rate of decline in...

Rink hockey is a highly specialized and physiological demanding sport with sparse research regarding the game and athletes' characteristics. A cross-sectional study was developed to characterize the body composition and grip strength of elite male rink hockey players and to establish the relationship between ethnicity on body composition and grip s...

Rink hockey is a highly specialized and physiological demanding sport with sparse research regarding the game and athletes’ characteristics. A cross-sectional study was developed to characterize the body composition and grip strength of elite male rink hockey players and to establish the relationship between ethnicity on body composition and grip s...

Football coaches design training tasks to optimize the team performance while amplifying the players’ ability to support their actions on the relevant information from the environment. To assist them, a wide body of research has explored how different rules affect players’ performance. However, there is scarce information on how adding specific loc...

This review aimed to identify and synthesize the most significant literature addressing talent identification and development in futsal. A systematic review of Web of Science™ (all databases), Scopus, PubMed and SPORTDiscus databases was performed according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines. This s...

This study aimed to explore which offensive variables best discriminate the ball possession duration according to players specific role (defenders, midfielders, attackers) during a Gk+3vs3+Gk football small-sided games. Fifteen under-15 players (age 13.2±1.0 years, playing experience 4.2±1.0 years) were grouped according to their positions (team of...

Competitive sports involve physiological, technical and psychological skills, which influence directly on individuals’ performance. This study aims to investigate the levels of perceived stress and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) before and after matches with victory and defeat in professional eSports athletes. Our hypothesis was that the winners woul...

El objetivo de este estudio fue comparar y evaluar los efectos de un programa de visualização mental (IM) en atletas de Boccia federados y no federados. Veintiún atletas de Boccia participaron en este estudio. Al comienzo del estudio, y después de un período de entrenamiento de IM de 8 semanas, se evaluó la capacidad de IM de los atletas (MIQ - 3)...

The literature lacks an understanding of the physical demands of team sports with unlimited substitutions (player interchange rotations). Because of this characteristic of the game, it is necessary to analyze the physical requirements through player rotation rather than analyzing global averages. The objective of this research is to investigate the...

The objective of this systematic review was to analyze the evaluation tools and indicators used to analyze games and training in women’s soccer. The PRISMA methodology was followed. After performing the steps of selection and exclusion of articles by the established criteria, 33 studies were included for review. The findings indicate that the main...

O objetivo desta revisão sistemática foi analisar as ferramentas e os indicadores de avaliação utilizados para analisar jogos e treinos no futebol feminino. Seguiu-se a metodologia PRISMA. Após a realização das etapas de seleção e exclusão de artigos pelos critérios estabelecidos, 33 estudos foram incluídos para revisão. Os achados indicam que as p...

This study aimed to describe the perception of expert futsal players about the pathway that guides their development to expertise. Twenty-three professional futsal players from Brazil, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Argentina were interviewed. The participants must have reached the elite in futsal by competing in professional leagues, as well as to ha...

This study aimed to identify Career Indicators (CIs) over the stages of career development (Initiation/Development, Mastery, and Discontinuation stages) in the retirement stage of Portuguese football players. Three thousand five hundred retired Portuguese football players that played between 1960 and 2018 were considered in this study. A path analy...

This study aimed to compare under-18 association football players’ performance (age = 17.7±1.0 years; playing experience = 9.0 ± 3.2 years) when manipulating the number of teammates and opponents during football game-based practices. Time-motion, individual and tactical-related variables were monitored when manipulating conditions with different nu...

Players’ performance results from their ability to interact with surrounding information to unfold goal-directed movement behaviours. In this respect, different task constraints emphasize distinct information, and consequently, leading the players towards different functional actions. For example, coaches may add wall barriers (training mannequins)...

In this study, we aimed to analyze (i) the strength and power changes after resistance training (RT) in elite futsal players, and (ii) the associations between the session rate of perceived exertion (sRPE) and perceived total quality recovery (TQR), and the sRPE and TQR with the volume load of the RT program. Ten elite futsal players (24.8 ± 5.4 ye...

Background: The aim of the present study was to examine the spatial relations between teams (macro-level) and groups of players (meso-level) that afford successful penetrative passes (off-ball advantage) in elite football. Methods: Three balanced home matches from a Premier League team with 91 ball possessions in which a pass was performed into...

This study aimed to identify the effects of playing with additional individual (IND), collective (COL) or individual-collective (MIX) variability on youth football players’ performance during small-sided games. Twelve youth football players (U17, age = 16.1 ± 0.9 years) played a goalkeeper (Gk) + 6 outfield players a-side (Gk+6vs6+Gk) under four co...