Modelling age-related changes in executive functions of soccer players

TL;DR

This study analyzes how executive functions develop in elite German soccer players, revealing significant growth in childhood and stability later, challenging their presumed importance in talent identification.

Contribution

First longitudinal analysis of age-related changes in executive functions in elite soccer players, highlighting developmental stability in later stages.

Findings

Executive functions grow notably from late childhood to pre-adolescence.

Executive functions remain stable in later developmental stages.

Implication that executive functions may be overemphasized in talent scouting.

Abstract

The widespread popularity of soccer across the globe has turned it into a multi-billion dollar industry. As a result, most professional clubs actively engage in talent identification and development programmes. Contemporary research has generally supported the use of executive functions - a class of neuropsychological processes responsible for cognitive behaviours - in predicting a soccer player's future success. However, studies on the developmental evolution of executive functions have yielded differing results in their structural form (such as inverted U-shapes, or otherwise). This article presents the first analysis of changes in the domain-generic and domain-specific executive functions based on longitudinal data measured on elite German soccer players. Results obtained from a latent variable model show that these executive functions experience noticeable growth from late childhood until pre-adolescence, but remain fairly stable in later growth stages. As a consequence, our results suggest that the role of executive functions in facilitating talent identification may have been overly emphasised.