The aim of the study was to examine how rewarding rules affects team tactical behaviour, players’ technical, physical and physiological performance in large-sided football games. An elite youth team (age: 14.0±0.2 years) performed 8 vs. 8 large-sided games under three experimental conditions: i) rewarding passing rule (PASS); ii) rewarding compact defending rule (COM); iii) control condition (CNT), using a Latin squared design. Positional data were used to compute effective play-space, team width, length, length-width ratio and approximate entropy, and capture distance covered and average speed displacement. Heart rate values were recorded using short-range radio telemetry. All bouts were filmed, and technical variables based on the TSAP were assessed. Magnitude-based inference and precision estimation was employed. Results showed mainly trivial and small differences between conditions for almost all variables. Received balls (RB) was the single variable that very likely increased with a moderate effect for COM compared to CNT. The small overall effects might indicate that rewarding rules effectiveness depends on i) creating affordances for the desired behaviour instead of trying to directly reward the behaviour; ii) its accordance with team identity; iii) its suitability to players’ skill level iv) combining rules with other coaching tools v) the timescale of exposure
