Can computer games make you better at sport in real life?

Can mastering a console help you become a maestro on the pitch? We asked an expert

Football and computer games are a nice marriage. But can spending time on a virtual pitch actually make you better at playing the game in real life? And if so, why hasn't Southgate been on the phone yet?

In an interview, external in the Italian press this week, Serie A’s current top goalscorer, Krzysztof Piatek, explained how he'd used a computer game to swot up on his new colleagues. "I had no idea who my team-mates at Genoa were when I signed. So I turned on my PlayStation and looked them up on Fifa."

And back in 2016, Arsenal midfielder Alex Iwobi told the New York Times, external he had used the game in a similar way, to check out the opposition.

In the same interview, he said he'd even taken some real-life football skills from his study of computer games. Growing up, there was one (perhaps surprising) player in particular he learned from - Irish winger Aiden McGeady.

“He had one turn that I would go out into the garden and practise.”

There are other anecdotal examples of players who claim football-based computer games have helped them on the pitch.

In 2008, after saving a penalty from AC Milan’s Ronaldinho, Palermo goalkeeper Marco Amelia, said: "It was just like playing against him on PlayStation. He had the same run-up. It was very strange."

Obviously, none of that necessarily proves there is a direct skills exchange between football gaming and actual playing but could sports-based computer games - or any kind for that matter - improve sporting ability?

Amy Price is a Uefa A Licence, external football coach and programme director for physical and sport education at St Mary’s University, London. She coaches at Fulham FC and, over the course of a masters degree, has also developed what she calls, “the digital video games approach to coaching”. 

“When somebody’s playing a lot of video games, they’re probably becoming really good at what we call the metacognition of what they’re doing,” she tells us.

In this context, metacognition is an idea used in education to refer when a student is 'thinking about thinking'. Put more simply, it's essentially about getting students to analyse the processes that help them learn, and to be able to use that knowledge to problem solve again in future.

Amy argues that video games are designed to encourage gamers to solve problems independently, without being presented the answers.

“All video games have problem-setting as a design principle,” she explains.

For Amy, that's a really important practice to transfer into football coaching.

“As in video games, we want choices and decisions in football to be directed by the player,” she has said, external. “Which gets them to think in more detail and depth around the problem, rather than simply being presented with answers."

Are sports-based games a better preparation for the real-world equivalent, rather than say, something like Tetris? Not necessarily, according to Amy. She believes that all video games can offer some benefits to learning.

“I guess that a football-based game does provide a more explicit tactical outlook,” she says, “but all video games rely on problem solving.” 

In fact, her coaching system doesn’t actually rely on playing computer games themselves at all, but, instead, borrows principles from game design. So, in training, she will incorporate stuff like 'superpowers', 'missions', 'pauses', 'saving progress' and 'level ups'.

For instance, a player might be given the superpower that they can't be found offside for a few minutes. That allows them, Amy argues, to see different aspects of the game that they wouldn't otherwise get to. Or, they may be able to pause the game and ask the coach for advice on something they're finding tricky - much like you might pause a game of Fifa or PES to work out your tactics.

Amy is still completing her research and there is still some way to go before we can talk about empirical measures of success, but some clubs are starting to integrate what looks like actual video game technology into their coaching too.

In recent years, Dutch sides PSV Eindhoven and AZ Alkmaar have brought in programmes that act a lot like old-school computer games to use on their academy prospects.

Young footballers might do things like shooting dots or bursting balloons through a video game. The programme that they use, called Intelligym, was originally developed to be used by fighter pilots. The idea is to test things like reaction time, decision-making and attention span.

Jurrit Sanders, a sports scientist at PSV Eindhoven, was keen to point out, external last year, however, that these are “not games” but “tests”. He did argue that there was a correlation though between success in these tests and success on the field.

“We have found that if a player comes in low on the tests, then they tend to leave the club at a low level,” Sanders said. “If they come in high, they tend to leave on a high level.”

As part of Intelligym's research, conducted together with University VU Amsterdam, 52 players across PSV and AZ, aged 14-17, used the tech twice a week, for 30 minutes, over a 10-week period. The results, external make some interesting claims, including that off-the-ball movement and positioning was improved by 56% and on-field decision-making was improved by 27%. They claim that, compared to a control group of players who didn't use Intelligym, those who did for at least 10 sessions improved by nearly 30% in on-field play.

Not everyone has been so sure of the benefits of video games in real life.

In 2013, Leyton Orient enforced a ban on playing video games on match days, external after attributing a dip in form to players spending too much time playing Fifa. Communications manager Jonny Davies told the Independent, external that “the gaffer suspects several hours playing football on a video game is not conducive to a good performance in the real thing.”

Perhaps that was more to do with the manner in which the games were being used. Apparently, the team had been playing on the team-bus before fixtures, rather than learning in any kind of structured environment.

It was also reported, external this week that Barcelona are concerned that forward Ousmane Dembele has a 'gaming disorder', missing training sessions because he was up all night playing computer games. Again, maybe it's about responsible use. His Football Manager success, external was one of the stranger stories at the World Cup.

So, can gaming make your performances better when you takes on physical sport in real life?

Well, computer games do ask players to test their problem-solving skills in high-pressure environments, which is not a million miles away from what athletes are tasked with on the field.

So, basically, yeah, there is an argument that, applied properly and responsibly, playing computer games could hone skills and strategies that positively impact your performances on the pitch.

In fact, if Amy Price's digital video games approach proves to be the way forward, then some of what it shows is that you don't even necessarily have to own a console to get better at sport. Instead, perhaps we can just learn a lot from the way that games are designed to help us solve problems on the field. 

"In video games, you're always thinking a few steps ahead," Amy explains. "In a similar way, all the best footballers always seem a few steps ahead of the play."

Maybe that's what Arsene Wenger meant when he said, external about Lionel Messi, "he's like a Playstation. I think he can take advantage of every mistake you make."

Anyway, we're off to load up the old console and we await that international call-up with bated breath.

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