About this Research Topic

Background

This Research Topic will be a collection of the flourishing research and practice themes within the domain of soccer psychology. Indeed, soccer is the most popular sport around the world attracting millions of people in various aspects and soccer psychology is a field of research and counseling that has been one of the fastest-growing areas in sport psychology over the past decade. It covers a diverse range of topics relevant not only to coaching and performance but also to personality development and health promotion.

The collection will provide a comprehensive treatment of key topics that capture the broad range of soccer psychology such as personality, motivation, cognition, and emotion, leadership, coaching and team dynamics, psychological skills, courage, mental toughness, resiliency for performance enhancement, and developing players in youth soccer. The objective of the Research Topic is to cover advances in soccer psychology through contributions from various fields of sport psychology presenting the cutting edge of current developments in research and practice indicated above. It will be a go-to resource for sport psychologists working in soccer but also for coaches, scouts, soccer managers, and students of sport sciences.

As recent development in the field of soccer shows, providing psychological help and consultancy in relation to performance and health promotion becomes an increasingly important issue to soccer players, soccer coaches, and managers around the world. Demands for soccer psychologists are increasing in soccer clubs, Olympic teams, and national squads. Specific knowledge is accordingly required.

Given that very limited text exists to provide a synthesis of this domain, students, academics, coaches, and managers are left to search research articles that represent silos of information in an unstructured way in relation to soccer psychology. This Research Topic will attempt to provide that critical resource.

This resource will offer an empirically-underpinned synthesis of research and theory, while offering guidance for applied practitioners related to indicated Research Topics above. Specifically, the topic will include a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research, case examples, a review of relevant literature, theories and models, specific interventions, and reflections on lessons learned from applied practice in soccer.

Keywords: Soccer Performance Psychology, Soccer Health Psychology, Soccer Coaching Psychology, Soccer Psychological Skills, Soccer Psychological Consultancy, Applied Soccer Psychology, Diversity

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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