Participants assigned to the experimental arm will receive soccer-specific cognitive-motor training in addition to their usual soccer training. The program will last 8 weeks, with 3 sessions per week and approximately 45 minutes per session. Each session will combine soccer technical practice with game-like cognitive demands, including scanning before receiving the ball, recognizing opponent pressure, identifying target players, selecting between passing, dribbling, or shooting options, responding to transition cues, and performing under time or opponent pressure. Training tasks will progress from constrained perception-action drills to conditioned small-sided games. The intervention is designed to improve executive functions, decision-making, and soccer skill performance under representative match-like conditions.

Participants assigned to the control arm will receive active technical training in addition to their usual soccer training. The program will last 8 weeks, with 3 sessions per week and approximately 45 minutes per session. Training will include conventional soccer technical drills, such as passing patterns, dribbling circuits, receiving and turning exercises, ball-control activities, and finishing practice. The control sessions will be matched with the experimental arm for training duration, session frequency, general soccer content, and approximate physical workload. However, they will not systematically include game-like cognitive-motor constraints such as opponent-pressure recognition, target-player identification, decision-switching cues, or structured pass/dribble/shoot choice demands.

This intervention integrates cognitive elements into basic soccer skill practice. Participants engage in 20-minute soccer dribbling sessions that include decision-making tasks, attention control, and working memory challenges embedded within motor actions. For example, players must react to color or number cues while performing dribbling drills. The purpose is to enhance both motor learning and cognitive performance through dual-task engagement.Cognitively Engaging Soccer Practice

Video-based soccer decision accuracy will be used as the primary outcome to assess soccer-specific decision-making performance. Participants will view attacking and transition scenarios from a field-player perspective. Each video will be occluded at a critical decision point, and participants will select the most appropriate action, such as pass, dribble, shoot, switch play, or retain possession. Decision accuracy will be calculated as the percentage of responses that match the expert consensus answer. Higher scores indicate better soccer-specific decision-making performance.

Dribbling performance time will be measured as the total time (in seconds) required to complete a standardized cone-dribbling course.