Jes Buster Madsen on cognition in elite football

The concept of “football intelligence” is common currency on the terraces and the training ground, but defining what it means in practice is far from straightforward. In this presentation, Jes Buster Madsen considers this question from a neuroscientific perspective, and discusses what the initial research in this area could mean for clubs and coaches.

Part 1: The 3-stage model of cognition
As a Dane, it’s perhaps no surprise that Jes Buster Madsen cites Michael Laudrup as the archetypal intelligent footballer. However, creative midfielders like Laudrup aren’t the only players with sharp football brains. To investigate how footballers demonstrate their intelligence, Madsen and his colleagues developed a three-stage cognitive model designed to help explain how players assess what is going on around them, decide how to respond, and take the appropriate action. This model could allow coaches and analysts to measure players’ cognitive skills, making it a useful tool for talent identification and player development.

Part 2: Stage 1 – assessing the play
For footballers, the first stage of the cognitive process is usually scanning the play. Elite players scan systematically and constantly, and they pay close attention to what they see. The aim of scanning is to help players recognise patterns of play, which in turn improves their chances of correctly anticipating what is about to happen and reacting accordingly. Happily for coaches, both scanning and pattern recognition are eminently coachable. In theory, the more your squad practise their bespoke tactics, the better they will get at working out how (and when) to use them. 

Part 3: Stages 2 and 3 – action selection and execution
Once a player has assessed the situation on the pitch, their brain then has to decide what to do about it, and initiate the motor “program” required to execute that decision. The outcome of this process is heavily influenced by the information picked up while scanning and the range of skills players instinctively know they can perform, which is one reason why top players are able to run this decision-making program a lot faster than recreational footballers. However, the cognitive system is flexible and learns from experience, which means coaches can influence their players’ decision-making through practice.

Part 4: How to test cognitive functions
These insights could have profound implications for measuring and improving players’ cognitive functions. There are many different ways of assessing cognitive ability, from paper-based tests to virtual-reality simulations. All of these methods have their own strengths and weaknesses, and in this section, Madsen discusses how to combine them to create a robust battery of tests. He then moves on to explain how the results of those tests might be used to create cognitive profiles and identify where players can hone their cognitive skills.

Part 5: Applying cognitive science on the training ground
To finish, Madsen explores how clubs can apply cognitive science on the training ground. The discipline plays a role in the four skills that influence decision-making on the pitch: scanning, inhibition, executive function and visual intelligence. All of these skills can be coached using specific drills, but you can only teach what you understand. With that in mind, it is crucial to ensure that coaches are educated about cognitive science and are fully behind any effort to introduce it into their training sessions.

Paper citation
Habekost, T., Ovesen, J., Madsen, J.B. 2024, ‘Cognition in elite soccer players: a general model’, Front. Psychol., vol. 15:1477262. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.147726

You can read the full paper here.