In this review, key components of perceptual skill in soccer are identiยฎ ed and implications for talent identiยฎcation and development highlighted. Skilled soccer players can recall and recognize patterns of play more eรพ ectively than their less skilled counterparts. This ability to encode, retrieve and recognize sport-speciยฎ c information is due to complex and discriminating long-term memory structures and is crucial to anticipation in soccer. Similarly, experts use their knowledge of situational probabilities (i.e. expectations) to anticipate future events. They have a better than average idea of what is likely to happen given a particular set of circumstances. Also, proยฎ ciency-related diรพ erences in visual search strategy are observed. Skilled players use their superior knowledge to control the eye movement patterns necessary for seeking and picking up important sources of information. The nature of the task plays an important role in constraining the type of search used. Skilled soccer players use diรพ erent search strategies when viewing the whole ยฎ eld (i.e. 11 vs 11 situations) compared with micro-states of the game (i.e. 1 vs 1, 3 vs 3 situations). Visual search behaviour also diรพ ers between defensive and oรพ ensive plays. These observations have implications for the development of perceptual training programmes and the identiยฎ cation of potential elite soccer players.