What makes a champion soccer player? Decoding the elite soccer player’s psychological profile
Contributed by Priscilla Roberts
Elite soccer players have remarkably higher levels of cognitive abilities compared to the general population, including advanced planning, working memory, and cognitive flexibility.
Moreover, they display distinctive personality traits such as heightened conscientiousness, extraversion and openness to new experiences, according to a major study.
The findings, published this week (14 January, 2025) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Journal, analysed 204 elite players from top-division teams in Brazil and Sweden, alongside 124 control participants. Using a variety of tasks assessing executive functions, memory, planning, and personality traits, the researchers uncovered several striking results.
In a major collaborative effort, bringing together the Universities of Oxford, Aarhus, Bologna, CQUniversity Australia, Rio de Janeiro State University and Karolinska Institute, the research team found that elite soccer players consistently outperformed control participants and the general norm in areas such as cognitive flexibility, planning, and working memory.
The study also revealed a distinctive personality profile among elite soccer players: they were more conscientious, extraverted, and open to new experiences than the controls.
They also showed lower levels of agreeableness and neuroticism. Both their cognitive skills and personality features were shown to predict key soccer behaviours, including goals, assists, and successful dribbles.
Using artificial intelligence, the researchers were also able to distinguish elite soccer players from controls with 97 per cent accuracy based on their individual cognitive and personality features. Nevertheless, the researchers emphasise that other psychological factors, such as mental toughness and group cohesion, may also have a significant impact on successful soccer performance.
“Around the world, millions of kids and teenagers dream of becoming soccer players. Coaches and managers have been looking for physical and technical skills to select the best amongst them and yet only a few become professional athletes,” explained Dr Alberto Filgueiras, a sports psychology expert from CQUniversity, and co-author of the study.
“Our research began in 2019 with the idea that cognitive and emotional skills need to be included in this equation. Our goal was to find out what makes elite soccer players so special and what drives their success.
“Our study not only confirms that cognition and personality are critical in sport performance, but also significantly expands on previous findings by combining psychological assessments with cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques.
”Preliminary research has previously suggested that elite players possess exceptional cognitive skills, particularly in executive functions, enabling them to adapt quickly to the dynamic nature of the game. However, those studies were often small or used non-elite players.
Building on these findings, the researchers from Sweden, Brazil, Denmark, Italy, Australia and the United Kingdom decided to do a major collaborative study to explore the cognitive and psychological profiles of elite soccer players specifically.
“Thinking in the future, our results point out to new technology that can be used by clubs and sport institutions to identify talents and develop athletes. Our article shows that combining psychological assessment with machine learning and AI will allow coaches and managers to be more accurate and effective in detecting and developing new talents in sports,” said Dr Filgueiras.
Dr Predrag Petrovic from the Karolinska Institute who coordinated the seminal studies on soccer and cognition stated that, “this study raises the intriguing possibility that traits like executive functions, planning, and memory may have been shaped by active group interactions throughout human history, such as cooperative activities like hunting. Soccer, with its dynamic and collaborative nature, provides an ideal context to study these traits”.
By decoding the cognitive and psychological profile of elite players, the study offers valuable insights into the psychology of human excellence and highlights the brilliance of top athletes.
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