Collective behavior characterizes the way in which an individual’s activity is influenced by other members of its group, and in turn how the individual influences it. In his book “Theory of Collective Behavior”, Neill Smelser said in 1962 that “Collective movements” would refer to collective efforts to modify norms and values, which frequently (but not always) develop over longer periods. The possibilities that new technologies bring to the ability to produce knowledge, should contribute to a better understanding of the individual contributions of each of the players for group performances in the sports context. Thus, it is of vital importance to contribute to a collection of works that have as a common objective to better understand the mechanisms that govern the collective behavior in team sports.

In a system consisting of many similar ‘units’ (such as players of a team sport) the interactions between them can be simple (attraction/repulsion) or more complex and can occur between neighbours in space or through an underlying social network. Team sports are played between two opposing teams where players interact directly, indirectly, and concurrently to achieve an objective that involves scoring goals/points while simultaneously preventing the opposition from scoring. In this sense, matches are composed of individuals who coordinate their movements and develop cooperative relations to outcompete their opponents. Historically, the analysis in team sports was focused on several descriptive indicators (with preponderance to player movement characterization) and in the comparison of different single players’ performance according to different contexts. As a result of advances that allow automatic player identification and tracking, some recent works started to explore group behavior analyses. These analyses mostly relied on metrics that gave overall collective scores (team centroid and dispersion, etc.) and less detailed insight into players’ individual contributions to the collective behavior (i.e. how players coordinate with each other). Works that encourage and provides new contributions to better understand the players’ individual role in the collective performance of team sports are encouraged and necessary.

In this Research Topic, we ask scientists to provide original data, offer commentary, and critically examine how past and future research studies could further our understanding of the mechanisms that govern the collective behavior in team sports. We welcome researchers to submit manuscripts in the form of Original Research, Narrative Reviews, Systematic Reviews with or without meta-analysis, Commentaries, and Perspectives on the collective behavior topics listed below:
• Collaborative behavior
• Collective and social intelligence
• Collective efficacy
• Collective movements
• Interopersonal coordination
• Social network analysis
• Tactical behavior
• Team coordination dynamics
• Team Synergies

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Frontiers in Sports and Active Living

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