Author(s): FUJISAWA, Y., HAYASHI, R., Institution: HYOGO UNIVERSITY OF TEACHER EDUCATION, Country: JAPAN, Abstract-ID: 1002

INTRODUCTION:
The ability to rapidly predict the ball-landing position in aerial situations is a critical perceptual-cognitive factor underpinning football performance [1]. Previous studies have examined anticipation during corner kicks, focusing on directional judgments rather than precise prediction of the final landing point, which is decisive for aerial duels [2]. Furthermore, landing point prediction in goal kicks has not yet been evaluated. This study aimed to clarify differences in predictive ability between experienced and inexperienced football players using a video-based temporal occlusion task.
METHODS:
The participants were 16 male university football players and 16 male university track and field athletes. The participants were presented with high-speed video (300 Hz) of the initial phase of goal kicks filmed from an on-field perspective. The viewpoint height was standardized at 165.4 cm, reflecting the average eye level of senior Japanese football players. The videos were occluded for +400 ms post-ball contact. The participants predicted the landing point by marking a scaled pitch diagram within 2 s of video termination. Prediction accuracy was quantified using the Euclidean distance (m) from the actual landing point. Independent t-tests and Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) assessed the degree of agreement along the x- (halfway line) and y-axis (touch line).
RESULTS:
Football players showed significantly smaller Euclidean distance errors than track and field athletes (p < 0.05). The CCC values indicated greater agreement for football players along the x-axis (CCCx = 0.831) compared with track and field athletes (CCCx = 0.269). In contrast, both groups demonstrated lower agreement along the y-axis.
CONCLUSION:
The superior prediction accuracy observed in football players suggests that sport-specific perceptual–motor experience enhances the ability to anticipate ball-landing positions from limited visual information. This finding is consistent with previous research indicating that motor expertise facilitates anticipation of ball trajectories based on observed movement patterns [3]. The lower prediction accuracy along the y-axis in both groups may be attributed to the substantially greater ball travel distance in this direction (>50 m) compared with the x-axis (maximum 20.39 m), making precise estimation more difficult. Overall, football-specific experience appears to provide a perceptual-cognitive advantage in predicting ball-landing points during goal kicks, which is likely to contribute to successful performance in aerial situations.

REFERENCES:
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2) Libreau C, Benguigui N. (2025) Improving women's team performance on corners through video training and ball trajectory anticipation. Front Psychol. 16: 1547493.
3) Paolini S, et al. (2023) Kicking in or kicking out? The role of the individual motor expertise in predicting the outcome of rugby actions. Front. Psychol. 14:1122236.