Time to drop running as a KPI in elite football: football fitness and freshness as match-day preconditions
Mandorino M, Lacome M, Verheijen R, Buchheit M. Time to drop running as a KPI in elite football: football fitness and freshness as match-day preconditions. Sport Performance & Science Reports. 2025 Apr; Report #254.
Full Text here
“Time to drop running as a KPI in elite football”
Yes, you read that right. Maybe it’s time to let go of the GPS obsession.
Because let’s be honest: Running doesn’t win games. It’s just what happens when players do the right things—move well, think fast, act at the right time. Still, we keep treating total distance like it tells us something deep about performance.
Massive credit to Mauro Mandorino & Mathieu lacome for this work. A real example of the Sport Science 3.0 mindset—mixing smart data and models with football knowledge and context. All inspired by the early thinking of Nick Broad, whose legacy still guides us today.
I wrote a short piece about Nick and his work at PSG before he passed.
Also a big thanks to Raymond Verheijen for always pushing the conversation forward. His work has helped us all get clearer with definitions, concepts, and keeping football at the center. We talked about all this in the Training Science Podcast if you missed it.
And of course, special mention to Alberto Mendez-Villanueva. We started questioning this “more running = better performance” idea more than 15 years ago. It wasn’t very popular back then. Still isn’t, in some places. But now we have the tools to show what we always believed.
The key takeaway? The best performance came from fresh, fit players who didn’t necessarily run more. They just played better.
Sport Science 3.0 isn’t about collecting more data. It’s about asking better questions.
The full paper is worth a read—especially if you’re still measuring success in meters run. Time to move on.
#SportsScience #FootballPerformance #CoachingMatters #NickBroadLegacy #RaymondVerheijen #AlbertoMendezVillanueva #SportScience3_0
