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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1548905
This article is part of the Research Topic Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Team Sports: Contextualizing Training and Competition Demands -Volume II View all articles

Water polo coaches believe they gain an advantage calling time-out before playing power-play, but is that really true?

Provisionally accepted
Corrado Lupo Corrado Lupo 1*Damiano Li Volsi Damiano Li Volsi 1Paolo Riccardo Brustio Paolo Riccardo Brustio 2Alexandru Nicolae Ungureanu Alexandru Nicolae Ungureanu 3
  • 1 NeuroMuscularFunction Research Group, School of Exercise & Sport Sciences, Department of Medical Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Piedmont, Italy
  • 2 NeuroMuscularFunction Research Group, School of Exercise & Sport Sciences, Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
  • 3 NeuroMuscularFunction Research Group, School of Exercise & Sport Sciences, Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The present study aimed to evaluate the impact of time-out on power-play outcome both in elite senior and youth matches, and in relation to final (MoV) and current (MoA) match score (i.e., winning in unbalanced games MW; winning-draw-losing in close games, W-D-L; losing in unbalanced games ML). Ninety-seven (seniors, n=50; youth, n=47) European Championship matches were analysed, comparing power-plays preceded or not by time-out in relation to the following offensive indicators: goal, exclusion, penalty, and no-goal. Results reported that both senior and youth levels have been characterised by better power-play outcomes without time-out (higher goals scored: senior, p≤0.01, youth, p≤0.001; and lower "no goal" events: p≤0.01, youth, p≤0.01). The same tendencies are confirmed in terms of MoV, despite with both higher goals scored (p≤0.05) and lower "no goal" events (p≤0.05) for senior close games, and youth losing teams in unbalanced games (higher goals scored, p≤0.01; and lower "no goal" events, p≤0.05). Differently, for MoA, both higher goals scored (p≤0.01) and lower "no goal" events (p≤0.01) emerged for senior losing teams in unbalanced games and youth close games (higher goals scored, p≤0.01; and lower "no goal" events, p≤0.05). Therefore, the present study demonstrated that time-out tends to limit the success of the following power-play action, and how MoV and MoA approaches are not overlapping. As a consequence, coaches could benefit from these findings to be more aware about the actual time-out consequences on the following power-play as well as their defensive potentialities when time-out is called by the opponents.

    Keywords: Technical indicators, Tactical indicators, Margin of victory, Time-out, power-play

    Received: 20 Dec 2024; Accepted: 05 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Lupo, Li Volsi, Brustio and Ungureanu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Corrado Lupo, NeuroMuscularFunction Research Group, School of Exercise & Sport Sciences, Department of Medical Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Piedmont, Italy

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