ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Elite Sports and Performance Enhancement
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1627820
This article is part of the Research TopicFootball training and competitionView all 11 articles
Performance Tracking in Female Youth Soccer Through Wearables and Subjective Assessments
Provisionally accepted
- 1Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Salzburg, Austria
- 2adidas AG, Herzogenaurach, Germany
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This study investigates performance development and the relationship between subjective and objective training assessments in female youth soccer using wearable sensor technology. The aim of this study was to assess how subjective post-training ratings (intensity and happiness) relate to high-percentile performance outputs, and to identify longitudinal trends in female youth soccer players using IMU-based wearable data. Data were collected over a 14-month period from 46 players (U17 and U20 teams) equipped with foot-mounted inertial measurement units (IMUs) during regular training sessions. Objective performance metrics, including 95th percentile of ball speed, peak speed, and absolute distance, were derived using a multi-stage machine learning pipeline, while subjective metrics (intensity and happiness) were collected via post-session Likertscale questionnaires using an app. Using the modified Mann-Kendall test, we found 30 significant longitudinal trends, with 14 positive and 16 negative trends across key performance metrics. Peak speed showed the highest number of trends (13), followed by absolute distance (10) and ball speed (7). Correlation analyses based on the Spearman coefficient (with False Discovery Rate correction) revealed meaningful associations between subjective self-assessments and highpercentile performance metrics, with notable differences across player positions and age groups.A robustness check confirmed these patterns also hold when analyzing the 99th percentile of performance outputs. Our findings underscore the value of combining wearable sensor data with subjective evaluations for individualized, role-specific performance monitoring and training optimization in youth soccer. However, as an exploratory study with a single cohort, findings require further validation in broader populations.
Keywords: Youth Soccer Performance, wearable sensors, Subjective Training Assessment, Machine Learning in Sports, Longitudinal monitoring
Received: 13 May 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kranzinger, Kranzinger, Kremser and Duemler. 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: Stefan Kranzinger, Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Salzburg, Austria
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