Relationship Between Emotional States, Emotion Regulation and Executive Functions in Professional Female Football Players

Football performance depends on multiple interacting factors, including physical, technical, tactical, and psychological components. Among the psychological factors associated with optimal performance are athletes’ emotional states, their regulation, and executive functions. Although executive functions and emotional states have been widely studied in sport settings, research examining the relationship between these variables in athletes is limited, particularly in female football players. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between emotional states, emotional regulation, and performance on cognitive tasks in female players from the Mexican football league. Twenty-eight players participated in two individual assessment sessions in which anxiety and depression levels, emotional regulation, and executive functions—planning, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility—were evaluated using psychological and neuropsychological tests. Results indicated a positive correlation between decision-making and emotional attention (rho = 0.36; p < 0.05), as well as between depression levels and onset latency in a working memory task (rho = 0.38; p < 0.04). Finally, a negative correlation was identified between the percentage of risk cards and the TMMS attention score (rho = −0.47; p < 0.01). These findings suggest associations between emotional processes and cognitive functioning in professional female football players and warrant further investigation in sport-performance settings.