Analytical and ecological approaches to aerobic and anaerobic conditioning in football

Research in professional football has shown that the physical demands of competitive match-play have substantially increased over the last few decades (Carling et al., 2016; Morgans et al., 2024) as well as training demands (Oliveira et al., 2022). As such, the role of support staff has developed to provide theoretical, scientific, and practical support to the manager in a variety of areas. These include performance analysis, strength and conditioning, and the integration of technical and tactical elements. The role of fitness and conditioning staff is to have knowledge of scientific literature and analyze performance data to condition and recover players appropriately to deal with the ever-evolving demands of elite football competition.