> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.altiusjournal.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What Alberto Cei and Mirko Farina Reveal About Concentration and Self-Talk in Football - URL: https://www.altiusjournal.com/concentration-and-self-talk-in-football-a-research-perspective/ - Published: 2026-10-21T11:49:08.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-21T11:49:08.000Z - Description: A research feature on concentration and self-talk in football through the work of Mirko Farina and Alberto Cei. - Author: Alberto Cei - Tags: Research, Sport Psychology, Alberto Cei Research In a football match, concentration rarely looks like stillness. A player must monitor space, opponents and teammates while deciding what to do with the next touch. The demands change continuously, sometimes within a single movement. So what does it mean to train attention for a sport in which the target of attention never stays put? That question runs through *Concentration and Self-Talk in Football*, a 2019 scholarly chapter by Mirko Farina and Alberto Cei. The authors bring together two aspects of sporting performance that are often discussed separately: the information a player attends to and the words a player uses to guide their own behaviour. ## Two sides of the same moment Imagine a midfielder receiving the ball after a misplaced pass. The next useful action depends partly on the information available: where pressure is coming from, which passing lane is open and how the team is positioned. Yet the player may also be talking to themselves, whether deliberately or automatically. Inner speech can orient attention towards the next action, or prolong an unhelpful reaction to the previous one. Farina and Cei consider concentration and self-talk in relation to elite football, including attention regulation, anxiety and performance at decisive moments. Their contribution is to treat psychological processes as part of the game's changing demands rather than isolated qualities a footballer simply possesses. This is a conceptual and applied chapter, not a report of a new randomised football trial. Its value is in the questions and framework it gives practitioners, not in proving a particular phrase will improve match results. ## What changes for a coach? The familiar instruction to “concentrate” gives a player remarkably little to work with. A more useful conversation starts with the task: concentrate on what, at which moment, and for how long? Before receiving, the player might be attending to opponents and space. During a technical action, a different cue may be useful. Immediately after an error, attention may need to move away from self-judgement and back towards the next phase of play. Short task-related cues are one possible tool, but the words must make sense to the player and the tactical context. The chapter does not provide a universally proven self-talk script. It invites practitioners to examine how inner language and attention interact and to test any routine against what actually happens in training and competition. ## A place in the research conversation The Farina–Cei chapter has appeared in later academic referencing, including a 2026 article on objective and self-assessed executive functions among youth academy footballers. That citation documents its presence in subsequent scholarship; it should not be mistaken for a direct replication of its propositions. The enduring value of this work lies in its precision. Footballers do not need to attend to everything. They need to notice the right information at the right time, and their internal language can be part of how that attention is directed. ## Attention as a changing task Footballers do not perform one continuous act of concentration. The information relevant before receiving possession is not identical to the information required during a pass or in the moments immediately after an error. This makes the relationship between concentration and self-talk a question of timing as well as psychology. A coach who simply demands greater focus may never identify which information the player has failed to notice, or why the next decision became difficult. A task-specific verbal cue might help a player return attention to the relevant part of play, but a cue can also become intrusive when it is too long or too consciously monitored. The scholarly value of Farina and Cei's discussion lies in making these distinctions available for applied inquiry, not in establishing a universal script. Video review, observation and a player's own account could be combined to investigate a particular situation without pretending that any one source reveals the entire cognitive process. The chapter also challenges an overly individual view of the mental game. A player's inner language develops in a team environment full of instructions, evaluations and expectations. Connecting internal speech to the practical demands of football is more useful than treating positive thinking as an isolated virtue. ## From the chapter to the training ground A research chapter can help a practitioner formulate better questions long before there is enough evidence to recommend a specific intervention. In the case of concentration and self-talk, the practical question is not simply whether the athlete uses reassuring words, but how those words relate to the decisions made in a particular passage of play. A player under pressing pressure may have very little time to consciously repeat a complicated verbal instruction. At other moments, a concise reminder may be easier to integrate into preparation. Whether it assists execution is an empirical question, not something that can be established from a phrase sounding sensible. The distinction between preparation and execution is important here. A coach can discuss possible attentional cues at leisure during training, then observe whether the player can use them during realistic play without becoming preoccupied with the cue itself. After a match, the discussion might examine several passages of play rather than relying on a player's memory of one conspicuous mistake. This creates the possibility of refining a routine without claiming that any observed improvement has a single psychological cause. Farina and Cei's work belongs to an area of sport psychology in which applied understanding depends on combining conceptual clarity with the specifics of performance. The chapter is useful because it places inner speech in a sporting environment full of competing information, changing priorities and emotional consequences. It is less useful when condensed to the familiar injunction to tell athletes to think positively. A sophisticated reading of the publication recognises that the words an athlete uses may matter, but that their meaning cannot be separated from the task being performed. ## Where This Research Has Been Cited and Discussed The 2019 chapter has been taken up in subsequent journal literature, including the following identifiable publications: - **2021 — *Ricerche di Psicologia*.** [*Effetti del self-talk istruttivo e motivazionale sulle prestazioni cognitive e tecniche di giovani portieri di calcio*](https://journals.francoangeli.it/index.php/ripoa/article/view/11936?ref=altiusjournal.com) lists Farina and Cei's chapter in its references. This is research on young football goalkeepers, not a replication of the chapter. - **2021 — *Adaptive Behavior* (SAGE).** [*Embodied cognition: dimensions, domains and applications*](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1059712320912963?ref=altiusjournal.com), by Mirko Farina, lists the 2019 football chapter in its bibliography. It is a broader conceptual discussion, not a football intervention. - **2026 — *Frontiers in Sports and Active Living*.** [*Age-related differences and discrepancies between objective and self-assessed executive functions in youth academy footballers*](https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2026.1711349?ref=altiusjournal.com) lists the chapter at reference 41. **Original book:** Farina and Cei's chapter appeared in [*Football Psychology: From Theory to Practice*](https://www.routledge.com/Football-Psychology-From-Theory-to-Practice/Konter-Beckmann-Loughead/p/book/9781138287518?ref=altiusjournal.com), Routledge, 2019, pp. 241–254\. An institutional [King's College London record](https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/concentration-and-self-talk-in-football/?ref=altiusjournal.com) identifies its original scholarly publication. These sources document citation and circulation, not endorsement of every applied claim. ## Research References - Mirko Farina and Alberto Cei (2019). [Original scholarly publication](https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/concentration-and-self-talk-in-football/?ref=altiusjournal.com). - [*Age-related differences and discrepancies between objective and self-assessed executive functions in youth academy footballers*](https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2026.1711349?ref=altiusjournal.com) (2026), *Frontiers in Sports and Active Living*. Reference 41 cites Farina and Cei (2019).