Vol. 7, Issue 1, Part A (2025)

The present study aimed to find out a comparative analysis of the mental skills of female football players based on their specific playing positions. The study was conducted on ninety intercollegiate female football players (n=90) comprising thirty strikers (n=30), thirty midfielders (n=30), and thirty defenders (n=30) with an age range from 17-24 years. A purposive sampling method was used for the study. The long version (LF30) of the UMSAT6 (Unified Mental Skills Assessment Tool) was used to measure the mental skills of the subjects with variables Cognitive Skills (Concentration, mental imagery and goal setting), Affective Skills (Activation and pre-competitive anxiety) and Recovery. To find out the significant differences among the players One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied with the help of SPSS. To test the hypothesis, the level of significance was set at 0.05. Based on the findings of the study, midfielders had shown higher than strikers and defenders in all the variables cognitive skills (Concentration, mental imagery and goal setting), affective skills (Activation and pre-competitive anxiety) and recovery on mean basis. Further, strikers and midfielders had shown significantly higher than defenders on affective skills (Activation).