ABSTRACT
Elite players who possess high levels of tactical skills are often described as the ‘playmakers’ or ‘students of the game’. Although recent evidence suggests developing this type of brain power requires just as much effortful practice as other aspects of player development, our knowledge about how coaches and players go about developing such skills is limited. For the most part, players’ tactical skills are often reported anecdotally rather than examined in a systematic way. That is, most statistics about players’ performance behaviors describe motor skills, using measures such as ball speeds or averages of goals, errors, assists, or serves. There is some work, however, by sport expertise researchers who have examined tactics in players at various age and expertise levels in a number of different sports.
