Ingrid Lian

• Lian, Ingrid; Gjesdal, Siv; Fletcher, Yanique & Jordet, Geir (2026). Body language on the pitch: insights into soccer players’ nonverbal behavior at the FIFA men’s World Cup 2022. Frontiers in Psychology. 16. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1699943. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Communication is an important aspect in team sports, yet there is a lack of studies looking at intrateam communication during performance. The aim of this study was therefore to explore soccer players’ use of nonverbal behavior (NVB) at the FIFA men’s World Cup 2022. A total of 18,031 distinct NVBs were registered for 143 individual players from 33 games, representing all 32 participating national teams. NVB was divided into tactical and emotional categories. Several statistical tests were performed to investigate the relationship between NVB and potential constraints (e.g., game stage, game halves, roles in a team, geographical location of the national team). The results showed that players displayed more tactical than emotional NVB, and more negative than positive emotional NVB. Moreover, there were differences in NVB expression based on positional roles, but not between captains and other players. NVB expressions changed throughout a game but did not differ between group stage games and knockout games. There were no differences in NVB expressions based on the end result of a game. The findings provide the first empirical examination of quantified NVB of soccer players from the World Cup context. The methodology and findings can be useful for soccer managers, psychologists, researchers and analysts to include psychological measures into game analyses.

• Lian, Ingrid; Gjesdal, Siv & Jordet, Geir (2025). Body language in elite soccer: comparing tactical and emotional nonverbal expressions using different video sources for investigation. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. ISSN 1612-197X. doi: 10.1080/1612197X.2025.2453808. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The aim of this study was to explore elite-level soccer players’ use of nonverbal behaviour (NVB) during real matches and compare different video sources (i.e., tactical, broadcast, and close-up) in terms of investigating this topic. The NVBs of eight elite players representing their national team (and a top-5 European league team) were analysed during one game. NVB was divided into tactical and emotional categories. Two Wilcoxon tests were performed. The results indicate that players displayed significantly more tactical NVB (Median = 146) than emotional NVB (Median = 52.50), Z = −2.52, p = .012, r = .89 but that they did not differ significantly in terms of positive and negative emotional NVB. Furthermore, there were more registrations of NVB captured from the close-up view videos as compared to both the tactical view (77.5% of the close-up view) and broadcast view (38.4% of the close-up view). Specifically, a statistically significant difference was found between close-up view and broadcast view, but not between close-up view and tactical view for most of the NVB categories. The findings demonstrate how players differ in their displays of tactical and emotional NVB, as well as how different video sources enable us to capture different amounts of NVB.

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