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Library›Sensory Sensors - Vision›This article

Football scanning: gaze, anticipation and visual training, what 46 studies say

Football scanning, 46 studies: a small but real link with passing; visual training improves the task, with no demonstrated transfer to matches.

By the LabO RNP teamReading time 24 minUpdated 2026

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Contents

  1. Football scanning: definition and three ways to measure it
  2. What the scan predicts in matches, and what it does not
  3. Experts' visual search: everything depends on the situation
  4. Training scanning: small-sided games, instructions and virtual reality
  5. Stroboscope, lights, dual task and 3D-MOT: gains close to the exercise
  6. What transfers to the field, what does not
  7. Links between studies
  8. The honest limits: what nobody can promise you about scanning
  9. Before any visual work in a footballer: the ophthalmologist first
  10. The footballer's gaze within the sensorimotor loop
  11. Football scanning: trainers' questions
  12. Sources

In brief. Scanning in football, those head rotations before receiving the ball, goes hand in hand with better passing success, but the effect is small and mixed up with opposition pressure. Visual training mostly improves the trained task; no trial analyzed measures a gain in an official match. 46 studies, out of an inventory of 155. Updated November 3, 2026.

Hello to you, the movement professional,

In Norway, four top-division midfielders played two 11-a-side matches, an internal match and a friendly, with a mobile eye tracker on their nose. The team of Karl Marius Aksum and Geir Jordet wanted to see from the inside the gesture spotted from the stands: the player who turns his head before receiving. Across 869 scans, the average duration comes to 0.40 seconds, and only 2.3% contain a fixation at the usual detection threshold of 120 milliseconds (Aksum et al., 2021). The midfielder who "reads the game" sweeps, almost never fixating in the sense the laboratory understands it.

Two questions for the trainer: what does the scan pick up if the eye does not stop, and can it be trained so that it shows on Saturday? The most serious objection fits in one sentence: among the trials gathered here, none has shown that visual training makes a footballer play better in an official match.

Football scanning: definition and three ways to measure it

The Norwegian group defines the scan as an active head movement that briefly turns the face away from the ball to gather information before playing it (Jordet et al., 2020). It is also called visual exploration. Three instruments measure it, and they do not capture the same thing.

Video, coded frame by frame, counts head rotations in the ten seconds preceding reception. Inertial measurement units fixed on the head measure rotation speed; in twelve university players in 6-a-side, a threshold of 250 degrees per second matches video coding (agreement 0.932), whereas the threshold of 125 degrees per second overestimates scans (Kokubu et al., 2026). Mobile eye tracking shows what the eye does: in matches, the fixations of five Norwegian midfielders are shorter than in the laboratory (Aksum et al., 2020). With a 360-degree headset, eleven sub-elite players scan at 0.31 per second (median), eleven novices at 0.06 (Feist et al., 2025).

This move toward the field is recent: a review of 38 studies, all based on recording eye movements, found none on exploration in open play (McGuckian et al., 2018). The puzzle of the scan without fixation remains. Aksum et al. judge the 120-millisecond threshold too high for the field and propose lowering it, which would bring out markedly more fixations; one lead, not tested in these studies, is peripheral vision, which can be brought closer to the dorsal stream of vision, the one that locates and guides action.

What the scan predicts in matches, and what it does not

The reference study filmed 27 players from a Premier League club over 21 matches, or 9,574 possessions. They scan on average 0.44 times per second before reception, central midfielders and center-backs more than forwards, and less when the opponent is very close. The ball is kept after 0.46 scans per second, lost after 0.37; a successful pass follows 0.46 scans per second, a missed pass 0.40. The differences are small (effect sizes of 0.20 and 0.15). Once the difficulty of the pass is taken into account, the authors' model estimates, as a mean value, a positive effect in about 86% of players, and they speak of "a small, but positive role" (Jordet et al., 2020). The project was partly funded by the club.

Study

Population (n)

What was measured

Result

Level of evidence

Jordet 2020

27 Premier League pros, 9,574 possessions

Scans per second, context, success

Positive, small link with passing

Moderate, a single club

Phatak 2019

35 midfielders from Euro 2016

Scan frequency, passes, turnovers

Scanning explains 3 to 4% of the variance in passing success

Low

Aksum 2021b

53 players from the 2018 U17 and U19 Euros, 1,686 situations

Scans by age, position, pressure

U19 above U17, positive link with passing

Low

Pokolm 2022

239 players from four youth Euros, 17 matches

Models of scanning

Link with passing and body orientation; pressure weighs heavily

Low

Pokolm 2023

162 players, 2019 U17 and U21 Euros

Direction of the last scan

It predicts the foot of the first touch

Low

McGuckian 2018

32 semi-elite players, 783 actions

Head rotations by inertial unit

More rotations, more forward play and turns

Low

McGuckian 2020

22 elite youth players, 1,623 minutes

Exploration by phase and zone

More in possession, less in transition

Low

Caso 2025

18 award-winning players against 18 teammates, Champions League

Matched scanning and performance

No difference

Low, cleanest comparison

These data are all observational. Opposition pressure lowers both scanning and success, and causality can run in reverse: the player who has time can afford to scan. The direction of the last scan, for its part, seems to prepare the oriented control, which ties in with work on spatial orientation and anticipation. The Gibson framework, on which Pokolm et al. rely, makes scanning a search for what the game offers to action, the perception-action coupling. It remains to be seen what the best players look at when they stop on the image.

Experts' visual search: everything depends on the situation

A frequently cited rule says that the expert makes fewer, longer fixations. Football shows that it depends on the task. In 24 players facing filmed sequences, the most experienced do not search differently in 3-on-3; in 1-on-1, on the contrary, they make more, shorter fixations, and look longer at the dribbler's hips (Williams and Davids, 1998). In 40 young players aged 13 to 15, the best decision makers fixate the ball carrier more and alternate more often between him and the rest of the scene (Vaeyens et al., 2007a), and the number of players on screen, like the proportion of attackers and defenders, changes the strategy (Vaeyens et al., 2007b). More short fixations also means more eye saccades to link the points of information.

On corners frozen just before, during and just after the kick, 23 skilled players predict the landing zone better than 23 less skilled ones, and they rely on the attackers' positioning rather than on the taker (Ivosevic and Stöckel, 2025). In 40 players, a wider peripheral field goes with faster passing decisions, the link with accuracy being weaker (Ivosevic and Stöckel, 2026). In eleven children aged 8 to 10, the weakest performers on a passing test look more at the ball while handling it (Vansteenkiste et al., 2022). Expertise shows in what the player chooses to look at depending on the task.

Basic visual functions of the professional footballer

Measured in professionals, basic visual functions say less about playing level than about what deserves checking. In 147 professionals, dynamic visual acuity varies by position, lower in forwards, and only a quarter of the players who would need correction wear it while playing (Jorge and Fernandes, 2019). In 107 professionals, 36.4% show at least one binocular vision disorder according to the authors' optometric criteria (Jorge et al., 2022). Professional and amateur footballers do no better than non-footballers on stereopsis tests (Paulus et al., 2014).

A meta-analysis of 22 studies and 1,113 team-sport athletes finds clear correlations between performance and multiple object tracking (r = 0.54), moderate with visual search (r = 0.36), null with depth perception (r = 0.09), while judging the quality of the evidence limited (Yang et al., 2026). A correlation says who succeeds, without saying what to train.

Training scanning: small-sided games, instructions and virtual reality

Study

Population (n)

Published protocol

Measure

Result

Transfer to the field

Level of evidence

Hintermann 2025

U19 female players, 61 recruited, 36 analyzed

5 weeks, 1 to 2 sessions per week of small-sided games and scanning-centered drills, allocation by team

Scans per situation in 4-on-4

Scans up, in elites only, maintained at three weeks; difference between groups not significant

Measured and null on success

Low

Erişik 2025

22 U16-U17 players

Virtual reality, 3 sessions per week, 7 weeks, on top of training

Scans and passes in small-sided games

Scans clearly up; passes not significant between groups after correction

Measured, uncertain

Low to moderate

Fortes 2021

26 young players

8 weeks, virtual reality versus video screen

Passing decision, visual search

Both improve, virtual reality more

Not measured

Moderate

Zhao 2022

Review of 10 studies

Video training

Anticipation, decision

8 studies out of 10 positive

Rarely measured

Low to moderate

Zwierko 2024

22 players

Stroboscopic glasses during a warm-up with ball, one session

Reactive agility, with and without ball

Gain with dribbling, maintained under fatigue; nothing without ball

Field test, acute effect

Moderate to low

Weng 2026a

36 university players

6 weeks, 3 sessions per week of football tasks, stroboscopic glasses versus clear lenses

Reaction, reactive agility

All five measures improve more

Field test

Moderate to low

Fortes 2025

28 matched players

8 weeks of stroboscope

Object tracking, anticipation, decision

Anticipation alone better

Not measured

Low to moderate

Schumacher 2020

38 elite youth players aged 12 and 13

20 min per week, 8 weeks, football task and juggling

Peripheral reaction time on computer

Progress in the trained group

Not measured

Low

Rodrigues 2025

24 pro or academy players, men and women

2 sessions of 30 min per week, 6 weeks, under modulated lighting

Dynamic acuity, reaction, periphery

Several gains; neither stereopsis nor anticipation

Not measured

Moderate to low

Ramírez Lucas 2025

32 U16 players

Cognitive and motor dual task, 24 integrated sessions of 10 to 15 min

Dribbling and passing tests, cognition

All variables improve

Field tests

Low to moderate

Heilmann 2023

33 young footballers

Phone game, 5 min per day, 5 days per week, 8 weeks

Executive functions

No effect, except one response time

Not measured

Low to moderate

Harenberg 2022

31 university players, including 16 women

3D-MOT, 10 sessions over 4 weeks

Passing decision on video

Trained task improved, decision unchanged

Measured and null

Moderate

Romeas 2025

62 academy players

3D-MOT as a dual task

Small-sided games, attention test

No near or far transfer

Measured and null

Moderate

Wood 2011

20 players

Quiet eye on penalties, 7 weeks, versus placebo

Accuracy, goalkeeper saves

More accurate and half as many saved at retention; advantage lost under pressure

Measured, partial

Moderate

Wu 2025

2 groups of 40 university players

15 min of mindfulness

Fixations, penalty score

Longer fixations, penalties unchanged

Measured and null

Moderate

"Heads Up Girls!" is one of the rare field interventions on scanning. Allocation was by team, without randomization, and only 36 players out of 61 met the analysis criteria. Scanning goes from 0.88 to 1.44 per situation in the trained group, but also from 0.61 to 0.92 in controls, and the interaction between group and time is not significant (p = 0.203). The increase holds three weeks later in 31 players. Across the whole sample, the share of successful actions after a scan even tends to fall, from 74.3% to 67.1%, without the difference being significant (Hintermann et al., 2025). The published block combined small-sided games, 4-on-4 with a neutral player or goalkeepers, and small-group drills: this is the principle of representative design, training in a task that resembles the game.

In virtual reality, the only randomized trial in this inventory that measures scanning raises pre-reception scans from 18 to 43 as a group mean, against a control group that stayed with usual training. The trained group improves on some passes, but its advantage over the controls does not survive statistical correction; the trial was registered after the fact (Erişik et al., 2025). The comparison between virtual reality and decision-making on screen is covered separately. Scanning behavior changes, at least over a few weeks; passing does not follow in any demonstrated way.

Stroboscope, lights, dual task and 3D-MOT: gains close to the exercise

Stroboscopic glasses interrupt vision intermittently. In a warm-up, a single exposure improves reactive agility with dribbling in 22 players (effect size 0.57), even when fatigued, with no effect without the ball (Zwierko et al., 2024). Over six weeks, against clear lenses and with blinded assessors, all five reaction and agility measures improve more, and the authors write that retention and transfer to the match remain to be established (Weng et al., 2026a). In 84 amateurs, the same constraint costs the best passers 11.1% of accuracy against 1.9% for the weaker ones (Beavan et al., 2021): it destabilizes the most skilled first.

On the lights side, reaction speed to a light panel is only weakly linked to reactive agility against a human tester in 44 players (Broodryk et al., 2025), a reminder that the motor reaction time measured against a light says little about the reaction against an opponent. The modulated-lighting trial by Rodrigues et al. counts among its authors an employee and a shareholder of the manufacturer, and measures no game criterion. Dual task built into training improves dribbling and passing tests (Ramírez Lucas et al., 2025), whereas a phone game, out of context, changes nothing (Heilmann et al., 2023).

Two balance trials under stroboscope in university footballers, men and women (Lu et al., 2025; Diao et al., 2026) report effect sizes reaching up to 3.7 and 4.0, and share the same registration number, filed after the fact: they are not used as evidence.

Multiple object tracking: the task improves, the game does not follow

Three-dimensional multiple object tracking (3D-MOT) has you follow several moving spheres among decoys. In 31 randomly assigned university players, ten sessions over four weeks improve the task, with no effect on the quality of passing decisions (Harenberg et al., 2022). In 62 academy players, the dual-task version improves on itself, with no transfer to an attention test or to small-sided games (Romeas et al., 2025); one of the authors co-founded the company that sells the tool, which makes the null result all the more telling. In elite young footballers aged 17 to 21, ten weeks of single-task 3D-MOT improve the task, with negligible transfer to other visual and executive functions (Scharfen and Memmert, 2021). The detail is found in the satellite article on 3D multiple object tracking.

What transfers to the field, what does not

The most useful thing is to sort each result by the distance between the exercise and the game. Near transfer, to a task that resembles the exercise, is frequent: 3D-MOT, reaction to light, scans in small-sided games. Intermediate transfer, to a played but framed task, exists: reactive agility with the ball under stroboscope, dribbling tests after dual task, penalty accuracy at retention. Far transfer, the official 11-a-side match, was measured by none of the controlled trials cited here. The null trials are named above: Harenberg 2022, Romeas 2025, Heilmann 2023, Wu 2025 on score, Hintermann 2025 on success, Erişik 2025 on passing between groups.

Two recent reviews go in this direction. One concludes that training consistently improves targeted laboratory measures, with weaker and more uncertain transfer to the field (Weng et al., 2026b); the other, covering 20 virtual reality studies in student footballers, judges the evidence promising but preliminary (Park et al., 2026). We find again the logic of transfer from training to the field, with a hypothesis that these data make plausible without demonstrating it: the more an exercise separates perception from action, the less it carries down into the game.

Links between studies

Study A

Relation

Study B

Caso 2025

nuances

Jordet 2020: scanning goes with passing within a team, without distinguishing award-winning players from their teammates

Aksum 2021b, Pokolm 2022, Pokolm 2023

samples probably partly shared

same youth Euros of 2018 and 2019

Jordet 2020, McGuckian 2018 (cohort) and 2020, Pokolm 2022 and 2023, Aksum 2020 and 2021

same author network

Geir Jordet co-signs all these studies

Harenberg 2022, Romeas 2025

do not replicate

an earlier positive result of 3D-MOT on passing decisions

Yang 2026 (r = 0.54 for object tracking)

contrasts with

Harenberg 2022 and Romeas 2025 (no transfer)

Zwierko 2024

converges with ball, diverges without ball

Weng 2026a, which also improves reactive agility without the ball (six weeks against one session)

Broodryk 2025

nuances

Schumacher 2020 and Rodrigues 2025 (reaction measured out of context)

Wood 2011

responds to

Wilson 2009: under anxiety, 14 shooters fixate the goalkeeper more and shoot more centrally

Lu 2025

same registration as

Diao 2026

The strongest convergence concerns the description of scanning, and the most fragile its training. A large part of the scanning literature comes from the same network of researchers and the same youth tournaments, which limits the independence of replications. On the penalty taker's side, the trial by Wood and Wilson targets precisely the gaze that breaks down under threat described by Wilson et al. (2009). The goalkeeper's gaze and the assistant referee's decision have their own satellites.

The honest limits: what nobody can promise you about scanning

Established: scanning can be measured in matches, by video as well as by inertial sensor, it varies with pressure, zone and position, and the expert looks differently depending on the task. Debated: the link between scanning and passing, real but small, mixed with pressure and perhaps reversed. Extrapolation: that training scanning, or isolated visual functions, makes you play better in a match. Nobody can promise you that a player who scans more will pass better, and the number of scans is not a performance indicator.

One prediction allows a verdict. If a team-randomized trial, in an academy, compares constrained small-sided games with practice of the same volume, takes as its criterion the quality of on-the-ball actions in an official match, with retention at two months, and finds no difference, the idea that scanning is usefully trained through play falls. That is the trial that is missing.

Before any visual work in a footballer: the ophthalmologist first

The share of binocular vision disorders found in professionals (Jorge et al., 2022) recalls the order of things. If your athlete reports double vision, a blur that persists, headaches on exertion or dizziness, visual training waits. They see an ophthalmologist first, then an orthoptist in France, or an optometrist in Switzerland or the United States. LabO RNP is neither medical nor paramedical, and is an addition to a care pathway, never a replacement for it. LabO RNP works with optometrists; the curriculum was built with them.

The footballer's gaze within the sensorimotor loop

The eyes are a doorway. What LabO RNP teaches is the whole sensorimotor loop: how what the athlete perceives organizes what he does, from postural control to the pass. Scanning gives a direct illustration, since the head turns, the body orients and the foot chooses before the ball even arrives. This is the territory of ecological motor learning. For the place of the eyes in the warm-up, read our article on oculomotor exercises in the warm-up; for the whole range of training families, the evidence map in sports vision.

Football scanning: trainers' questions

What is scanning in football?

It is an active head movement that briefly turns the face away from the ball to take in information before receiving it (Jordet et al., 2020). It is measured by video, by an inertial unit on the head or by a mobile eye tracker. In matches, a scan by an elite midfielder lasts about 0.40 seconds and rarely contains a detectable fixation (Aksum et al., 2021).

How many times does a professional footballer scan before receiving?

In 27 Premier League players, the average is 0.44 scans per second in the ten seconds before reception, with central midfielders and center-backs above forwards (Jordet et al., 2020). This figure describes a group: no study provides an individual norm to reach.

Do the best players in the world scan more than the others?

The cleanest comparison says no. Eighteen award-winning Champions League players, matched with eighteen teammates from the same line and the same match, differ neither in scanning nor in performance (Caso et al., 2025). Scanning remains a group landmark, not a selection criterion.

Can a footballer's scanning be trained?

The number of scans rises clearly after seven weeks of virtual reality (Erişik et al., 2025), and in elite female players after five weeks of small-sided games centered on scanning, with no significant difference from controls (Hintermann et al., 2025). In both trials, the success of passes or actions does not improve significantly between groups. The behavior moves; its effect on the game remains to be demonstrated.

Do stroboscopic glasses or 3D-MOT improve play?

The stroboscope improves reactive agility with the ball in two trials, one on a single warm-up session (Zwierko et al., 2024), the other over six weeks (Weng et al., 2026), with no match measure. 3D-MOT improves on its own task, with no transfer to decision-making or to small-sided games (Harenberg et al., 2022; Romeas et al., 2025).

Is a visual assessment needed before training a footballer's vision?

Yes. In 107 professionals, more than a third had a binocular vision disorder (Jorge et al., 2022). The ophthalmologist comes first, then the orthoptist or optometrist depending on the country. LabO RNP is neither medical nor paramedical, and is an addition to a care pathway, never a replacement for it.

Scanning is measured better than it is trained, and it is in the game that you check what you trained outside the game.

👉 I want to understand what my athlete perceives before correcting what he does.

By the LabO RNP team


Method. Inventory of 155 football studies built on November 3, 2026 from PubMed and the LabO RNP vault sheets, completed by targeted PubMed searches on scanning in matches; 46 studies retained here for their direct link with scanning, visual search, visual functions and outfield player training. Goalkeeping and refereeing are covered in dedicated satellites; concussion and heading are outside this silo. Excluded: studies with no available abstract or verified identifier. Two balance trials under stroboscope are cited with reservations. Every PMID and every DOI was checked against the PubMed record on November 3, 2026; one non-indexed study is cited by its DOI, checked on Crossref.

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Contents

Football scanning: definition and three ways to measure itWhat the scan predicts in matches, and what it does notExperts' visual search: everything depends on the situationTraining scanning: small-sided games, instructions and virtual realityStroboscope, lights, dual task and 3D-MOT: gains close to the exerciseWhat transfers to the field, what does notLinks between studiesThe honest limits: what nobody can promise you about scanningBefore any visual work in a footballer: the ophthalmologist firstThe footballer's gaze within the sensorimotor loopFootball scanning: trainers' questionsSources

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