Cognitive functioning and sports performance in young soccer players: A systematic review

Abstract

Cognitive functioning is acquiring special relevance when studying the factors that influence soccer performance. Although the relationship between cognitive functions and sport performance has an extensive literature in adult soccer players, the same does not happen in young players, where this association has not been explored in depth. This work arises with the objective of knowing the state of the issue and going in depth in this line of research in youth categories, between 8 and 19 years old. For this purpose, a systematic review has been carried out on the existing relationship between cognitive functioning and sports performance in youth soccer players. In order to carry out this systematic review, the articles published on this issue in the last 10 years were analyzed following the PRISMA method. For an exhaustive search of the literature, the database Web of Science (WoS), SCOPUS, Dialnet, PubMed and Google Scholar, among others, were used, including articles published both Spanish and English. Finally, 12 articles were analyzed and included in the review. The results showed significant relationship between cognitive functions and performance in youth soccer players, highlighting variables such as attention, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility or decision making, finding differences between scores obtained by elite soccer players and those obtained by amateur athletes or general population, being significantly higher in the first group.