Technical and tactical evaluation of ball possession in international youth water polo matches using TSAP instrument

In water polo, the playing style of a team is characterized by players’ tactical behaviour. The purpose of this study wasto provide an analysis of offensive actions, by means of the Team Sport Assessment Procedure (TSAP) of the first fouryouth national teams during the 20th FINA Junior Water Polo World Championships. Twenty-nine elite youth (U20) waterpolo matches, involving the national teams of Greece (n=7), Serbia (n=7), Italy (n=7) and Croatia (n=8) were selectedfor the analysis. The TSAP included: i) two indicators of gaining possession of the ball; ii) four indicators of disposingthe ball. Using these indicators, the following indices of technical performance were computed: Volume of Play (VP),Efficiency Index (EI) and Performance Score (PS). The field was divided in twelve zones. The one-way ANOVA showedno significant differences between teams for all parameters (p>0.05), except that for Offensive Balls (OB) and SuccessfulShots (SS) occurred in specific zones of the field: for OB significant differences were found in zone 1 (p=.019),in zone 2 (p=.014) and in zone 5 (p=.007); for SS significant differences were found in zone 1 (p=.026) and in zone 2(p=.008). The main reason of between-teams differences could be explained by the presence of a left-hand player inthe game, and by the tactical behaviour of coaches and players. The TSAP instrument could offer productive feedbackto coaches to perceive the different requirements of playing and to evaluate how players understand the game.