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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Movement Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1452443
This article is part of the Research TopicTheory and Practice of Soccer PsychologyView all 8 articles
Neuromotor Mechanisms of Successful Football Penalty Kicking: EEG Findings from a Pilot Study
Provisionally accepted- 1Department of Humanity and Sociology in Physical Education, Jilin Sport University, Changchun, China
- 2Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
- 3Department of Sports Psychology, Faculty of Physical Education, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt
- 4International Football Education School, Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun, Hebei Province, China
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Understanding the neuromotor processes underlying successful and unsuccessful performance in lower limb movements, such as football kicking, is essential for athletes.However, further investigation is needed to determine whether lower activation of the prefrontal and central cortices, which are associated with motor programming, such as motor planning and motor control, corresponds to higher degrees of psychomotor performance in a difficult task. To address this issue, this within-subject pilot study aimed to investigate neuromotor processes in skilled football players performing penalty kicks under a difficult condition. Specifically, 10 skilled football players were recruited and asked to perform 30 kicks under a difficult condition where the target size was adjusted to maintain a kicking success rate between 40% and 60% for each player while we recorded EEG data during motor preparation. Afterwards, EEG power in the 8-13 Hz frequency band was analyzed at frontal (Fz) and central (Cz) regions before action. The main result indicated that successful penalty kicks were associated with lower 8-13 Hz power at frontal and central regions before action, suggesting efficient neural activation for motor planning and control during motor preparation. These findings support the model of attention allocation and the psychomotor efficiency hypothesis, aligning with similar neuromotor processes observed in golf studies.Overall, this study highlights the critical role of motor planning and control in successful athletic performance.
Keywords: Psychomotor efficiency, neural efficiency, Electroencephalography (EEG), motor preparation, Cognitive-motor performance, attentional allocation
Received: 20 Jun 2024; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Wang, Elbanna and Lu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kuo Pin Wang, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
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