Good Reasons for Poor Passing: A Video-based Study of Incomplete Passes in Football

Abstract

This report examines breaches in coordination between members within an activity where embodiment is the primary source for the practical treatment of actions by fellow others. The perspicuous activity under scrutiny is passing the ball in association football; the practical phenomenon is the misplays between teammates who fail to complete the pass, not because of a lack of technical skill, but rather because of a breakdown in coordination between them. Prior findings suggest that competent members of a practice manage to coordinate their courses of action within collaborative activities by anticipating and projecting the actions of their fellow members. The machinery behind this relies on the ability of members to recognise the trajectory of actions and relate to it through their own contributions. Practical competence is crucial in this respect, as it enables members to “read” actions-in-progress and complement them accordingly. This report treats coordination as a methodic interactional achievement. It extends prior analysis by focussing on the moments in interaction when practical competence is insufficient to establish and maintain mutual understanding of an ongoing situation between members. The findings reveal that the source of misunderstanding between members are the moment-to-moment shifts in the relevance of particular details of an ongoing situation, as multiple courses of action unfold simultaneously. Members display their orientation towards emerging problems by adjusting their actions according to the course of action, projected by their fellow member. The data for this report consists of video fragments taken from televised broadcasts of elite level professional association football.