The interpretation of performance in football has traditionally been dominated by a reductionist approach, analyzing the different dimensions of athletes individually and in isolation. This linear and causal vision seeks to understand behaviors by breaking them down into parts, assuming that the body functions like a perfect machine. Once the individual components (technical, tactical, and physical) are maximized, it is believed that they can be combined to achieve sporting success. While this approach may sometimes yield results, it fails to capture the intrinsically dynamic, complex, and interconnected nature of the game.

From the perspective of ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory, a football team is not merely the sum of its parts, but rather a superorganism: a complex adaptive system in which collective behavior emerges from the continuous interaction between players and a constantly changing environment.

Within this framework, speed transcends the individual and mechanical dimension, encompassing team speed and game speed. This implies recognizing that players’ behaviors are part of a dynamic and relational system. Thus, discussing complex speed involves understanding it as a manifestation of the player–team system, which must perceive and act functionally in relation to environmental conditions within real time constraints.

According to these considerations, team preparation should not focus solely on improving individual physical speed, but also on optimizing intra- and inter-player coordination, and the adaptation of the perception–action coupling to changing contexts. Consequently, the primary objective of complex speed training in football is to facilitate faster interpretation of environmental stimuli by both players and teams, expanding the meaningful perceptual–motor field at the individual and collective levels, and developing anticipatory systems for prospective outcomes, all aimed at achieving optimal performance under temporal stress.