Exploring the Impact of Social Relationship Modification on Young Female Soccer Players' Performance in Small-Sided Games.

This study compared young female soccer players' tactical, conditional, and emotional responses during two small-sided games (SSGs), without restrictions (SSG), and introducing an additional rule (SSG: if a player touches an opponent just before she receives the ball, her team wins the ball back with an indirect free kick). Fourteen developmental U14 players participated in two 4 × 6-min seven-a-side games (six each, plus goalkeepers) on a 50-m long × 30-m wide field. Players' positional data were collected using a GPS to assess their tactical performance (central tendency and entropy measures of the surface area, distance between players and to the nearest opponent, and stretch and spatial exploration indices) and conditional performance (total and low-moderate, high, very high speed, sprinting distance covered, and the number of accelerations and decelerations).