Close soccer matches and tight title fights are rarely decided by players' technical skills or their coaches' tactical measures. The most significant impetus comes from an area that is often mentioned but difficult to grasp: mental strength, personality, and team cohesion after special victories. 

Using current scientific knowledge and illustrated by many examples, this book describes the mental and cognitive processes that determine victory and defeat in soccer. Several interviews with well-known soccer coaches, managers and former players complement these findings from psychology and sport science.

It deals with phenomena such as the home field advantage, creativity on the field, extreme emotional situations, the limits of visual perception, group dynamics and modern leadership. Well-known myths (e.g. Don't let the player who has been fouled shoot the penalty) will be discussed and debunked. Every soccer enthusiast should read this book in order to understand which phenomena can genuinely be game-changing and which ones cannot.

Prof. Dr. Daniel Memmert is the managing director of the Institute for Training Science and Sports Informatics at the German Sport University Cologne. According to a publicly accessible Elsevier database of the world's 200,000 leading scientists, he ranks first in Germany in the field of "Sport Science" and 8th worldwide in the field of "Sports Science/ Experimental Psychology". His scientific work focuses on sports psychology and computer science. Prof. Dr. Bernd Strauß is Professor of Sport Psychology and currently managing director of the Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Münster, Germany. He served as the longtime Co-Editor-in-Chief of the leading international sport psychology journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise (2011-2022). His work focuses on research on social processes in sport and expertise research. Daniel Theweleitworks as the sports correspondent for North Rhine-Westphalia for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, but is also active for Deutschlandfunk, the taz and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The Bundesliga and international soccer are at the center of his work.

Faith and Knowledge.- Art and Intelligence.- Friends and Enemies.- Power and Powerlessness.- Illusion and Reality.- Red Light and Yellow Fever.- Perception and Deception.- Pressure and Failure.- Harmony and Drama.- Risk and Side Effects.