Psychological Factors in Soccer Talent Development: A Systematic Review

A 2026 meta-analytic review synthesizes research on psychological factors associated with talented soccer players. The work by Filipe Casanova analyzed 12 longitudinal studies covering 3,748 players from recreational to elite levels. It found a trivial pooled effect size for achievement motive and rated the overall certainty of evidence as very low.

Use Cases

• Assessing the prognostic value of achievement motive for future soccer performance based on the meta-analysis findings.
• Evaluating methodological heterogeneity in measuring psychological constructs like mental toughness, grit, and resilience.
• Designing multidimensional, longitudinal assessment frameworks that integrate psychological, technical, tactical, and physical data.

Strengths

• The review is based on 12 longitudinal studies covering 3,748 players.
• It employs systematic review methodology with a registered protocol (OSF.IO/J4EPT).
• Risk of bias and certainty of evidence were assessed using standardized tools (ROBINS-I and GRADE).

Limitations

• The pooled effect size for the main finding (achievement motive) was trivial (g = 0.198).
• Overall certainty of evidence for all outcomes was rated very low.
• The dataset is a 29.3 KB document; the underlying data tables or raw study data are not included.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Systematic review and meta-analysis of records from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-06 12:17:50.