Level of play and coach-rated game intelligence are related to performance on design fluency in elite soccer players

Executive brain functions are innate mechanisms for regulating behavior.
While the impact of suboptimal executive functions has been characterized
in patients, their contribution to individual success has not been
elucidated. We set out to understand how executive functions relate to
successful human behavior by examining their relation to game intelligence
in sport - the ability to read a game and quickly adapt the behavior. In
elite soccer players (n = 51), those playing in national teams (national
team players) significantly outperformed those only playing at premier
league level (premier league players) in Design Fluency (DF), a complex
visuo-spatial executive function test that includes measures of creativity
and cognitive flexibility. Their result showed a moderate correlation with
coach rated game intelligence, also when correcting for low level
cognitive capacity and was most evident when considering cognitive
flexibility. DF capacity also correlated with number of assists made
during the season but not with number of made goals during the same
period, linking the fast planning of several steps in DF to fast planning
of several steps in the soccer game. Altogether, our data suggests that DF
capacity relates to success in soccer both on a subjective and on an
objective level.