Developing game awareness, perception and decision-making in elite youth footballers

Abstract

In football, elite players appear to have more time and space, understand the pattern of the game, make better decisions with the ball and be one step ahead of their opponents. Some players are anecdotally believed to ‘just have it’. This study examined the process of perception-decision-execution during skill acquisition within football and whether training focussed on cognition and perception leads to players’ decision-making being improved. There appears to be a gap in both the research and application in the sporting context as to the role and trainability of decision-making in football and whether greater perception of the in-game environment contributes to better decision-making. The aim of the study was to examine the effects of multi-task and cognitive effort training during football practice and to determine the impact of these methods on perception and decision-making regarding a player’s first touch in the match environment. The study involved an experimental design using a control trial during the intervention. Players from two teams (N=31, age M=14.18, SD=0.55), competing in the NSW National Youth Premier League (NYPL) were divided into control and intervention groups and completed testing at three time points (pre-, post-intervention and retention). A training intervention was conducted replacing the 20 minute traditional passing practice component of the training. The intervention consisted of cognitive load exercises based on first touch ball manipulation and movements commonly found in football. The effectiveness of the training intervention was assessed via three methods; a video-based decision-making test using 20 video clips with players depicting their first touch, a questionnaire self-assessing decision-making and expert analysis of individuals’ game performance from footage of games. Results indicate that the altered training environment was equally effective to traditional passing practices in all three measures used in the study. There was a significant difference in the video-based testing (p < .01), for both the control and intervention groups between pre-test (M=7.196) and post-test (M=10.714) and between pre-test (M=7.196) and retention test (M=10.750) supporting previous studies that on field training positively influences decision-making in video-based tests. The questionnaire revealed players self-assessed their decision-making ability at a constant level across both the control and intervention groups. Game performance in the match environment indicated players made less poor decisions leading to losing possession, but did not improve decision-making to create more scoring chances. The impact of the altered training environment on players across the three measures are discussed along with the implications of the results for the development of decision-making in youth football. Recommendations are made for the scope and focus of future research into training and testing decision-making through cognitive load training.