Psychological readiness of football players for the match and its connection with self-esteem and competitive anxiety
- PMID: 38496851
- PMCID: PMC10944273
- DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e27608
Psychological readiness of football players for the match and its connection with self-esteem and competitive anxiety
Abstract
For athletes, failure in a match is psychologically difficult. Since the movement abilities of athletes are often comparable, it is assumed that one of the key elements of victory is also their psychological readiness. Many experts recommend rigorously examining all factors affecting the performance of football players, especially in matches. The aim of our study is to determine whether a football player's coping with adversity, coachability, motivation to succeed, goal setting, peaking under pressure, or fear of failure are significantly predicted by their self-esteem or a specific aspect of competitive anxiety, which can be crucial for the direction of psychological preparation in collective sports. The research sample consisted of 107 male football players in the age range of 18-29 years registered with the Slovak Football Association, who actively participated in the team's matches. Football players filled out a booklet of psychological tests, including the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory, the Sport Anxiety Scale, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. The results of the regression analysis showed that the self-esteem of football players is a significant predictor of achievement motivation and their ability to listen to the coach's instructions. Along with the somatic component of anxiety, it also predicts goal-setting. Cognitive anxiety of football players, characterized by negative thoughts, turned out to be a significant predictor of coping with adversity during a football match and their peaking under pressure, and together with concentration disruption, it also predicts the ability of football players to free themselves from worries about what the audience thinks about their sporting performance in the match.
Keywords: Athletes; Competition; Coping skills; Mental training; Sports psychology; Stress; Team sport.
© 2024 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Conflict of interest statement
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Similar articles
-
Financial Awards and Their Effect on Football Players' Anxiety and Coping Skills.Front Psychol. 2020 Jun 10;11:1148. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01148. eCollection 2020. Front Psychol. 2020. PMID: 32587548 Free PMC article.
-
Competitive Anxiety, and Guilt and Shame Proneness From Perspective Type D and Non-type D Football Players.Front Psychol. 2021 Mar 24;12:601812. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.601812. eCollection 2021. Front Psychol. 2021. PMID: 33841237 Free PMC article.
-
Competitive Psychological Disposition and Perception of Performance in Young Female Soccer Players.Front Psychol. 2019 May 22;10:1168. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01168. eCollection 2019. Front Psychol. 2019. PMID: 31191392 Free PMC article.
-
Age of First Exposure to Contact and Collision Sports and Later in Life Brain Health: A Narrative Review.Front Neurol. 2021 Sep 29;12:727089. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2021.727089. eCollection 2021. Front Neurol. 2021. PMID: 34659092 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Sex differences in injury rates in team-sport athletes: A systematic review and meta-regression analysis.J Sport Health Sci. 2022 Jan;11(1):104-114. doi: 10.1016/j.jshs.2021.04.003. Epub 2021 May 28. J Sport Health Sci. 2022. PMID: 34052518 Free PMC article. Review.
References
-
- Kaplánová A. Self-esteem, anxiety and coping strategies to manage stress in ice hockey. Acta Gymnica. 2019;49(1):10–15.
-
- Kaplánová A. Personality of gymnasts and coping strategies to manage stress. Science of Gymnastics Journal. 2019;11(2):255–265.
-
- Kaplánová A. In: Sport Physical Education and Performing Arts as Tools of Social Transformation. Torrents C., Sebastiani E.M., editors. Inde Publicaciones; Barcelona: 2019. Anxiety of football players and their coping strategies to manage stress; pp. 279–281.
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources