Open Access
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Sleep Sci 2024; 17(S 01): S1-S89
DOI: 10.1055/s-0045-1811752
Sleep Science Supplement 2024

Sleep Quality and Performance of Adolescent Female Football Athletes: a Pilot Study

Authors

  • Karine Gonçalo Nunes

    1   Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil

  • Fabíola Feitosa Freitas

    1   Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil

  • Beatriz da Rocha Leão Borba Viana

    1   Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil

  • Maria Júlia Coutinho Barreto Menezes

    1   Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil

  • Luíza Andrade de Oliveira

    1   Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil

  • Fabiana Godoy

    1   Universidade de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil
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Keywords

sleep quality - soccer - teenagers - performance

Introduction: Sleep is a physiological state that plays a fundamental role in the healthy development of adolescents, with daily implications, especially in behavior, attention and emotion (Hosokawa et al., 2022). However, many youth football teams do not take teenagers' quality sleep into account. Associated with this, inappropriate behaviors can harm the quality of life, and, consequently, the development and performance of adolescent athletes (Erlacher et a., 2011).

Objective: To analyze the quality of sleep and performance of football athletes in the female youth category.

Methods: The sample was made up of 32 teenagers (girls) from the youth football categories aged 10 to 24 years, from clubs in the city of Recife (Pernambuco). This is field research with a quantitative approach and cross-sectional design. All participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire with screen time. Sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the subjective assessment of performance using the Likert scale regarding the perception of each athlete's sporting performance, completed by a member of the technical committee (Arruda et al., 2018).

Results: The prevalence of poor sleep quality, performance and screen time were 27.8%, 22.8% and >4 hours, respectively. The analysis of covariance revealed better performance in adolescents with better sleep quality (PSQI ≤ 5; all p values < 0.05).

Conclusion: Adolescent athletes from the youth football categories have a high prevalence of poor sleep quality. It was also demonstrated that screen time proved to be a mediator of the association between sleep quality and could cause harm to the athlete performance.


No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).

Publication History

Article published online:
16 September 2025

© 2025. Brazilian Sleep Academy. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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