Football: Physical, Cognitive, Psychological

Football: Physical, Cognitive, Psychological Who doesn’t like a good confirmation bias coming their way—especially when it’s backed by a scientific study? For several years now, I’ve been convinced that to be a great football player, athleticism and coordination are just as important as cognitive abilities and personality traits. The paper in the link, “Decoding the elite soccer player’s psychological profile,” presents an extensive study using a robust set of validated psychological tests across several domains, combined with advanced statistical techniques. It shows that elite football players tend to have: 1-Heightened planning and memory capacities. 2-Enhanced executive functions—especially cognitive flexibility—as well as higher levels of conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness to experience. 3-Lower levels of neuroticism and agreeableness. Football is played across three equally important domains: physical, cognitive, and psychological. Of course, I haven’t looked for studies that might prove me wrong 😊—so for now, I’ll fully enjoy my confirmation bias. P.S. I plan to look more closely at how they applied neural network features to the psychological variables to obtain and interpret their results. The approach seems both interesting and potentially applicable to other fields of study. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2415126122?sma=lanewsletterdekikollaneras_2026.02.13&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=lanewsletterdekikollaneras_2026.02.13

- Pedro

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