Abstract:

The objective of the study was to verify the relationship between the percentage of ball possession and the final score in matches of the National Futsal League. A hundred and seventy-six official matches of the National Futsal League in Brazil in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 were analyzed. From each match was collected the participating times, year and championship phase, score and percentage of possession. To verify possible differences between of the percentage of ball possession and the result, Student's t-tests for all the matches and for each phase of championships were performed. A one-way Anova was performed to analyze the differences in the percentage of ball possession between the home and visiting teams in all matches. Moreover, a Pearson correlation was performed to examine the relationship between the difference in ball possession and the difference in goals. Descriptive results revealed the team with less percentage of ball possession won 104 out of 176 matches. Inferential analysis considering all matches revealed that losing teams had greater ball possession than winning teams. Similar results were found in the specific analyzes of the group phase, quarterfinals and semi-finals. In addition, playing at home, teams displayed higher ball possession than playing away. We concluded that less ball possession time was an indicator of winning matches in the National Futsal League.

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