A ROLE FOR COGNITIVE & MENTAL SKILLS
The benefits associated with psychological assessments of footballers is that they are more reliable than physical assessments. Cognitive and mental skills may vary between teenagehood and adulthood. But often, between-player differences are stable over time. In other terms, a player who is more creative than the average at 14 years old is likely to also be more creative than the average adult.
Thus, cognitive and mental skills are good targets of predictive recruitment. Scientific studies’ findings, by the way, went beyond expectations. Typically, these studies assess psychological dimensions in young players between 12 and 16 years old. They then follow the same players’ performance and career in academies and in the professional world.
Results? Some psychological dimensions, as assessed during teenagehood, predict performance at a professional level, such as number of goals scored or number of matches played in the first national division. The outcome of psychometric assessments is then sufficient to predict a young player’s likelihood of success at the professional level. Autonomy, creativity, individual commitment, competitiveness are part of the cognitive and mental skill set that predicts adult performance.
No responses yet