Journal of Novel Physiotherapies
Open Access

Review Article

Cognition in Football

¹Medical Services FC Barcelona, FIFA Excellence Centre, Barcelona, Spain

²University of Zululand, Kwadlangezwa, South Africa

*Corresponding Author:

Ricard Pruna, MD, PhD
Medical Services FC Barcelona
FIFA Excellence Centre
Barcelona, Spain
Tel: +41-(0)43 222 7777
E-mail: ricard.pruna@fcbarcelona.cat

Received date: October 18, 2016; Accepted date: November 17, 2016; Published date: November 25, 2016

Citation: Pruna R, Bahdur K (2016) Cognition in Football. J Nov Physiother 6: 316. doi:10.4172/2165-7025.1000316

Copyright: © 2016 Pruna R, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Football players are required to make instantaneous and continuous decisions throughout the match, without have pre-determined playing sequences at their disposal. The football field is an unpredictable area, with players required to access cues from team-mates, opponents, the ball, playing surface, environment, coaches and referees. A high level of cognitive skill is required to enable players to fulfill their physical and technical potential. Skills such as game intelligence, spatial perception, anticipation, reaction time, attention shifting, and pattern recognition is relevant cognitive skills. These skills can be enhanced by ensuring training sessions train not just the physical components but also challenge and train the neural pathways. This review looks at some of the important cognition elements that are relevant in football performance.

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