Variability of External Intensity Comparisons between Official and Friendly Soccer Matches in Professional Male Players Nobari, Hadi Brito, João Paulo Pérez Gómez, Jorge Oliveira, Rafael Performances Load monitoring High-speed running Match load Player load Sprints The aims of this study were to compare the external intensity between official (OMs) and friendly matches (FMs), and between first and second halves in the Iranian Premier League. Twelve players participated in this study (age, 28.6 ± 2.7 years; height, 182.1 ± 8.6 cm; body mass, 75.3 ± 8.2 kg). External intensity was measured by total duration, total distance, average speed, high-speed running distance, sprint distance, maximal speed and body load. In general, there was higher intensity in OMs compared with FMs for all variables. The first half showed higher intensities than the second half, regardless of the type of the match. Specifically, OMs showed higher values for total sprint distance (p = 0.012, ES = 0.59) and maximal speed (p < 0.001, ES = 0.27) but lower value for body load (p = 0.038, ES = −0.42) compared to FMs. The first half of FMs only showed lower value for body load (p = 0.004, ES = −0.38) than FMs, while in the second half of OMs, only total distance showed a higher value than FMs (p = 0.013, ES = 0.96). OMs showed higher demands of high intensity, questioning the original assumption of FMs demands. Depending on the period of the season that FMs are applied, coaches may consider requesting higher demands from their teams. 2021-12-09T08:20:44Z 2021-12-09T08:20:44Z 2021 journal article Nobari, H.; Brito, J.P.; Pérez-Gómez, J.; Oliveira, R. Variability of External Intensity Comparisons between Official and Friendly Soccer Matches in Professional Male Players. Healthcare 2021, 9, 1708. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/healthcare9121708 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/71928 10.3390/healthcare9121708 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ open access Atribución 3.0 España MDPI