Does the Motivation, Anxiety and Imagery Skills Contributes to Football (Soccer) Experience?

Abstract

The article is devoted to football psychology, especially how motivation, imagery skills and trait and state anxiety contributes to sport experience of athletes. 162 male football (soccer) players, mean age=16,93±3,93 yrs participated in the research. According to the results, professional athletes outperform other groups of footballers in frequency of imagery use in sport: mostly in cognitive-specific imagery and cognitive general imagery. The professional footballers in comparison with less experienced football players are more intrinsically motivated to experience emotional stimulation in sport and to know new methods and techniques to enhance sport performance.