A validated framework of offensive criteria for multi-criteria decision-making in football: A systematic review, qualitative meta-synthesis, and e-delphi study

The evaluation of offensive performance among football forwards increasingly relies on multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models. However, the offensive criteria used in these models, understood as decision-making dimensions distinct from the indicators through which they are operationalised, remain rarely explicit, structured, and systematically validated in the literature. This study aimed to construct and validate a framework of offensive criteria intended to support transparent and comparable MCDM applications by examining its content validity among expert coaches. The methodological design involved three complementary stages: (1) a systematic review, conducted according to PRISMA guidelines, of studies applying MCDM methods in football and indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection; (2) a qualitative meta-synthesis designed to structure the identified decision-making dimensions into a parsimonious set of non-redundant offensive criteria; and (3) a single-round e-Delphi procedure involving 30 coaches holding a UEFA A or UEFA Pro licence, of whom 26 were retained for analysis after attention-check screening. The criteria were assessed using a seven-point Likert scale, with three instructional manipulation checks included to detect inattentive responses. The results showed a high level of inter-expert consensus for the eight retained criteria, with mean ratings ranging from 5.92 to 6.50 out of 7, coefficients of variation below 0.15, and Content Validity Ratio values ranging from 0.62 to 1.00, all exceeding the critical threshold. This framework provides a literature-based and expert-validated conceptual foundation that can be used as an entry point for MCDM applications applied to the evaluation of football forwards.