A significant amount of research has been undertaken in recent years to identify the important factors underpinning elite sports performance. This increase in research activity has been particularly evident in soccer, where the importance of sports science research and applied work is now more widely accepted (see Reilly & Williams, 2003). While the
importance of sports science is appreciated by those involved with professional clubs and national governing bodies, the majority of work has been undertaken by exercise physiologists. Other traditional sports science disciplines, such as sport
psychology and motor learning, are generally under-represented both in the applied and research fields (Reilly and Gilbourne, 2003). It appears that the soccer world has embraced the biological sciences with greater enthusiasm than the behavioura or social sciences.
Several reasons may be advocated for this leaning
towards the so-called ‘‘harder’’ sciences. First, it is
much easier to evaluate the effectiveness of fitness
conditioning programmes than interventions which
attempt to change behaviour. Meaningful changes in
aerobic and anaerobic capacity or in anthropometric
characteristics such as body composition and mass
can be easily determined using standard laboratoryand/or
field-based measures.