Soccer is one of the most widely played sports in first than in the second half of a match; nevertheless,
the world, and players need technical, tactical and aerobically fit players may be spared this decrement
physical skills to succeed. In part, professional soc- in performance.[8,10] However, no correlation has
cer is more concerned with selection rather than been documented between an individual’s percentdevelopment.
However, the focus of this review is age VO˙ 2max at LT and decrement in performance
exclusively on the development of players’ ability, over the course of a game.[11]
primarily their physical resources. Individual tech- Previous studies demonstrate a significant relanique,
tactics and physical resources share impor- tionship between VO˙ 2max and both the distance covtance
when evaluating performance differences in ered during a game[2,4] and the number of sprints
soccer. The average importance of each of these first attempted by a player.[2] Rank-order correlation belevel
analytic approaches to differences in perform- tween average VO˙ 2max and placing for the first four
ance is close to one-third. teams in the Hungarian First Division ChampionWithin
physical resources, strength and power ship was shown by Apor.[12] The mean VO˙ 2max of
and their derivatives acceleration, sprinting and elite soccer players is normally reported to be bejumping
share importance with endurance in ex- tween 55–67 mL/kg • min[9,13-17] with individual
plaining differences in physical resources within the values greater than 70 mL/kg • min.
soccer performance.