A CROSS SECTIONAL ANALYSIS OF MENTAL TOUGHNESS AND WILL TO WIN AMONG ELITE FOOTBALL PLAYERS

SINGH, J.; DUREJA, G.; SINGH, S. A cross sectional analysis of mental toughness and will to win among elite football players. Brazilian Journal of Biomotricity. v. 6, n. 4, p. 285-296, 2012. Physically and mentally football is known as tough game and famous for very stiff competitions. The psychology of each individual player in such stiff competition played a significant role to perform at top level. While considering the paramount importance of psychological variables the present study was carried out to analyse the role of mental toughness and will to win among foreigner professionals, Indian professional and Indian nonprofessional football players. A total eighty six (N=86) male subjects, Out of which fifteen (N=15) foreigner professionals, thirty four (N=34) Indian professional and thirty seven (N=37) Indian non-professional football players were randomly selected for the collection of data. The age of the subjects was ranged between 20 to 34 years with the mean age of 27.60. Mental toughness was measured with mental toughness questionnaire and Will to win was measured with will to win questionnaire. ANOVA was applied to find out the difference in mean scores among foreigner professionals, Indian professional and non-professional football players. Where ‘F’ values found significant in ANOVA, then Scheffe post-hoc test was applied to see the mean difference between three groups through SPSS. The level of significance was set at 0.05. The results revealed that foreigner professionals are significantly better as compare to Indian professional and Indian non-professional football players with regard to Mental Toughness. However, the will to win among foreigner professionals, Indian professional and non-professional football players were also found significant in favour of foreign players.