Without good technical skills, neither you nor your team will perform their best in football. But how do you actually become technically good?
Unfortunately, a new study shows that natural talent is not enough. It takes training – and targeted training.
"We investigated the relationship between eight different skills in football. We wanted to see if they were connected in some way, or if you have to develop them separately," says Professor Hermundur Sigmundsson at the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Twenty-three semi-professional players from Iceland participated in the survey. All the players belonged to the same Icelandic elite club. It provides a comparable basis in terms of training and experience in football matches.
The players had to go through eight technical exercises from the "Test of Technical Skills in Football" (TTSF). These measure skills in:
"The correlations between the different skills are low. We find minimal overlap," says Sigmundsson.
This means that you have to practice the different skills separately. If you train yourself to become good at one of the skills, you will not automatically get better at another of them.
"This supports the hypothesis that you need to train motor skills separately. Practicing technical soccer skills requires targeted training. If you get better in one area, it doesn't spill over to another," says Sigmundsson.
This information is important for both trainers and researchers.
"The training must be well thought out and differentiated if you are to get the best possible results. You have to adapt the training to the skills you want the players to get better at," he says.
Sigmundsson worked together with colleagues from NTNU and from Queensland University of Technology.
Reference:
Hermundur Sigmundsson, Rúnar Páll Sigmundsson, Monika Haga, Remco Polman, The association between eight different skills in football: an explorative study , Football Studies, Volume 1, 2026, 100033, ISSN 3051-2689, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.footst.2026.100033
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The association between eight different skills in football: an explorative study
10-Mar-2026