Scientific Research of FIFA World Cup and Sports Performance Analysis Advances: A Bibliometric Review Study

For more than four decades, FIFA World Cup has attracted growing interest from scholars, students, and academic institutions worldwide. This paper aims to analyze the literature review of FIFA World Cup and sports performance analysis, using the bibliometric analysis to examine the data of 2665 studies published in Scopus from 1974 to 2022 related to this topic. The results were presented and discussed with the following approaches: keywords, authors, references (research papers), research work, countries, and research institutions. The study found that bibliometric analysis is fundamental in detailing the theoretical literature and developing an integrated theoretical framework on FIFA World Cup and sports performance analysis. This review provides reference points for entry into this interdisciplinary field and benefits grassroots researchers by providing a more accessible and systematic analysis of the current situation and development direction of sports performance in past World Cups.


Introduction
FIFA World Cup is an acronym for the International Federation of Association Football.The Uruguay World Cup in 1930 was the inaugural FIFA World Cup.Only 13 teams from three continental confederations competed, all of which were qualified by invitation.In contrast, the 32 participating teams for the 22 nd FIFA World Cup in Qatar are from the football national teams of 205 countries and regions in the six continental federations who were promoted through the "tragic" qualifiers, in which countries as strong as Italy (FIFA national team ranked 6th in the world), Colombia (ranked 17 th in the world), Sweden (ranked 25 th in the world), and China (ranked 79 th in the world) failed to qualify.As can be observed, today's World Cup stage is full of powerful players, strong players, and talents.According to statistics, the 2018 Russia World Cup had over 3.5 billion worldwide TV viewers, accounting for 44% of the global population (FIFA, n.d.).The World Cup's popularity, impact, and competitive level are all evident.Sir Alex Ferguson, former Manchester United coach, stated in an exclusive interview after his retirement: "There is no question that sports science has brought about the most significant and lasting transformation in my life.It has elevated football to a new level.Maybe it was something we could never have imagined many years ago.Football now has a whole new dimension thanks to sports science."(Buchheit, 2017).What happens therefore when the tremendous advancement of sports science collides with the World Cup, which marks the pinnacle of football?Where is the spark?To identify appropriate answers, this paper employs a bibliometric method.This study is essential for the professional growth of football coaches, players, and performance analysts.The data collected enables them to comprehend the development and requirements of FIFA sports performance and thus, be able to make innovations, visualizations, evaluations, feedbacks, generalizations, and future plans.The study aims to determine the bibliometric analysis results and the results of the process, which will benefit the researchers in administrative sciences in drawing the correct direction.This study, then, includes identifying keywords, the most influential researchers in the field, the research work, reference sources, countries, and reference research institutions.

Results and Discussions
Based on the data for FIFA World Cup, the bibliometric analysis units were presented and discussed a set of results

Publishing Trends of World Cup-Related Research Papers
Figure 1 shows the number of papers on World Cup-related research in the Scopus database over time.The first research paper on the World Cup was published after the (10th World Cup1975).Rost et al (1975) published the relevant analysis results on the hemodynamic response of live TV viewers of the World Cup in "Medizinische Welt".From then on to the 15th World Cup (1994), relevant papers will be published after each World Cup, but the growth rate is slow.Since the 16th World Cup, many related studies have been produced in the year or after each World Cup, and the number of published papers has increased sharply.The publication peaks were formed in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and even reached the peak in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.From the 2014 World Cup in Brazil to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the number of published articles showed a relatively stable trend with some fluctuations.

Disciplinary Distribution of World Cup Related Research
As shown in Figure 5, among the research papers related to the World Cup, 1779 belong to the social sciences, accounting for 41% of the total, and the fields of medicine and engineering account for 12%, respectively.In addition, it also involves a variety of disciplines, such as business management, art, computer science, psychology, environment, geography, biochemistry, physics and neurology.Among the 2665 papers retrieved, 45 were cited more than 100 times, ten were cited more than 200 times, and only one was cited more than 300 times.It can be seen from Figure 8 that the subject of the most cited papers is the quantitative analysis of passing, shooting and scoring in football matches (316 citations).The following paper took the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup as an example to reflect on the evaluation of the economic effects of large-scale sports events (291 citations).The third most cited paper used Seoul as the host city as an example to investigate residents' views on the impact of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup (cited 275 times).It is worth pointing out that the paper "Match statistics related to winning in the group stage of the 2014 Brazil FIFA World Cup" published in the Journal of Sports Sciences by Liu Hongyou, a Chinese scholar, as the first author in 2015, has been cited 128 times and ranked 30th in related research papers.

Significance of the Study
This study will benefit grassroots researchers by providing a more accessible and systematic analysis of the current situation and development direction of sports performance in past World Cups, as well as improving the refinement and enhancement of this research area.Simultaneously, the theoretical analysis of various concepts related to bibliometric analysis and the introduction and discussion of the FIFA World Cup and sports performance analysis are addressed in detail.The bibliometric analysis identifies more overlapping studies while minimizing discrepancy statistics and search selection issues.

Conclusion
This study delved into the theoretical analysis of various concepts associated to bibliometric analysis, as well as the presentation and discussion of FIFA World Cup and sport performance analysis.We obtained results in the bibliometric analysis when compared to standard approaches, allowing for a diverse variety of research (databases) while avoiding bias and search selection issues.The researcher's decision complements bibliometric analysis methods but it does not replace conventional ways of analysing theoretical literature.The bibliographic analysis is also useful for defining important phrases, identifying the most prominent academics in the subject, identifying research work and reference sources, and identifying nations and reference research institutes (analytical units).
This study will help researchers and sport industry players to understand the status of FIFA World Cup and identify trends in FIFA World Cup.This study also reinforces the growing recognition that FIFA World Cup plays a significant role in society and more and more studies are done on it.
The research questions of this study are as follows: RQ1: What are the publishing trends of World Cup-related research papers over years?RQ2: What are the popular keywords authors use the most in World Cup-related research?RQ3: What are the popular journals for World Cup-related research publications?RQ4: What are the types of paper published for World Cup-related research?RQ5: What are the disciplinary distributions of World Cup-related research?RQ6: Who are the active authors of World Cup-related research?RQ7: What are the most active research institutions concerning the production of research papers on World Cup? RQ8: Who are the most cited authors in the field of World Cup-related research?RQ9: What are the top countries concerning the production of research papers on World Cup? RQ10: What is the distribution of Chinese institutions publishing papers related to World Cup?
Database: Scopus, Search time: 16 November 2022, Search type: ((TITLE-ABS-KEY(FIFA World Cup) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY(football World Cup) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY(soccer World Cup) AND NOT TITLE-ABS-KEY(robot) AND NOT TITLE-ABS-KEY(rugby) AND NOT TITLE-ABS-KEY(women)).A total of 2665 documents related to FIFA World Cup were retrieved.

Figure 1
Figure1The number of publications related to the World Cup over year

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Popular keywords of World Cup-related research

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: Popular journals published on World Cup-related research

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: Types of papers related to World Cup research

Figure 5 :
Figure 5: Disciplinary distribution of World Cup-related research

Figure 7
Figure 7 Active institutions for World Cup-related research

Figure 8
Figure 8 Top five World Cup-related research papers with the most cited frequency

Figure 9
Figure 9 Ranking of published papers by countries related to the World Cup