Psychological Factors in Soccer Talent Development: A Systematic Review

A systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizing research on psychological factors associated with talented soccer players. The study analyzed 12 longitudinal studies covering 3,748 players from recreational to elite levels, sourced from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The document was authored by Filipe Casanova and published on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Evaluating the predictive value of achievement motive for future soccer performance based on the meta-analytic findings.
• Assessing methodological heterogeneity in psychological measurement tools across studies as described in the review.
• Designing multidimensional talent assessment frameworks integrating psychological, technical, tactical, and physical factors as recommended.
• Critically appraising the evidence quality for constructs like mental toughness, grit, and resilience in talent selection.

Strengths

• The review is based on a systematic search of 4,015 records from three major databases.
• It includes a meta-analysis of 12 longitudinal studies covering 3,748 players.
• Risk of bias and certainty of evidence were formally assessed using established tools (ROBINS-I and GRADE).

Limitations

• The pooled effect size for achievement motive was trivial (g=0.198) with large heterogeneity (I²=78.5%).
• Overall certainty of evidence for all outcomes was rated very low.
• The dataset is a single 18.7 KB document; row count and column-level documentation are unknown.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Systematic review and meta-analysis of published longitudinal studies.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-06 12:17:51