After Italy's victory over Luxembourg, interim coach Silvio Baldini also gave credit to the stars. This expression offers a starting point for distinguishing—in light of scientific literature—between superstitious thinking and routine preparation for the performance.

The cue

After Italy's 1-0 win over Luxembourg in the friendly on June 3, 2026, interim coach Silvio Baldini told Rai that he knew the team would win because "the stars were on our side." This reference prompts a reflection on the superstitions surrounding sports.

We don't intend to comment on the tone or expression, which are colloquial and emotionally charged with the language of those who passionately live their sport. We are instead interested in the reference—widespread in locker rooms around the world—to superstitious thinking, and the scientific question it raises: does superstition really help performance? And, above all, should it be confused with a pre-race routine, which is quite different? The distinction isn't academic: it concerns where the athlete takes credit for what happens to him, and therefore how much he will continue to invest in training, awareness, and tenacity.

What is superstition in sports?

In psychology, superstition is the belief that an action or object with no causal connection to an outcome can nevertheless influence it: touching the grass before entering the field, always wearing the same piece of clothing, tying your left shoe first. It is a form of magical causation. Its behavioral roots were described by Skinner (1948), who observed how pigeons developed completely useless repetitive behaviors when food was delivered at random intervals: the animal coincidentally associated its own movement with the reward and replicated it. The same mechanism, in humans, transforms a lucky coincidence—a victory achieved while wearing a certain shirt—into a private rule to be respected.

Why athletes resort to it: uncertainty, importance and tension

Superstition does not appear by chance. In a study conducted on high-level athletes, Schippers and Van Lange (2006) showed that adherence to rituals increases in two specific circumstances: when the outcome is uncertain and when the competition is important. The element that links both conditions to ritual is psychological tension: the ritual acts as a regulator of anxiety, a sort of placebo that restores a sense of control in situations experienced as unpredictable. Not surprisingly, athletes with an external locus of control—those who tend to attribute events to forces outside their control—were more attached to rituals than those who perceive outcomes as dependent on their own actions.

Does superstition "work"? The case of the lucky charm.

Science demands caution here, and this is precisely where credible analysis differs from suggestive storytelling. A much-cited study by Damisch, Stoberock, and Mussweiler (2010) reported that activating a superstition—believing one had a "lucky ball," crossing one's fingers—improved performance on golf, dexterity, memory, and anagram tasks, and that the effect was reflected in an increase in perceived self-efficacy. In other words: it wasn't the object that made the difference, but the confidence it induced.

However, subsequent high-powered replications did not confirm that result. Calin-Jageman and Caldwell (2014) repeated the golf experiment with larger samples and more rigorous designs, finding that participants "with the lucky ball" performed almost identically to controls; their meta-analysis reported a heterogeneous effect, essentially absent in the most methodologically robust studies. The balanced conclusion is clear: the possible benefit of superstition does not reside in the object or ritual itself, but—when it exists—in the security a person associates with it. It is a fragile, inconstant, and uncontrollable effect.

Superstition and pre-race routine: a crucial distinction

This is where the difference that matters comes into play. The pre-performance routine (PPR) is defined as a sequence of task-relevant thoughts and actions that the athlete systematically performs before action (Cotterill, 2010). It doesn't bring luck: it prepares the mind and body. Its mechanisms are documented—improving attention and task orientation, regulating anxiety and arousal, planning action, and strengthening self-efficacy (Cotterill, 2010; Cohn, Rotella, & Lloyd, 1990).

And, most importantly, routine has measurable effectiveness. Rupprecht, Tran, and Gröpel's (2024) meta-analysis, based on 112 effect estimates, found a significant, albeit small, effect in pre-post designs (SMC = 0.31) and a moderate to large effect in experimental designs, both in low-pressure (g = 0.64) and high-pressure (g = 0.70) conditions. Routine, unlike superstition, stands the test of replication and comparison with a control group.

The following table summarizes the functional differences.

The Risk of Relying on the Stars: The Locus of Control

The tricky point isn't a coach's expression in a moment of joy, but what would happen if that mental frame were internalized by athletes. Attributing victory to the stars means placing the credit outside oneself. It's the very definition of an external locus of control (Rotter, 1966): the belief that outcomes depend on luck, fate, or uncontrollable forces rather than on one's own behavior.

The problem is twofold. First, it deprives me of responsibility. If I won because the stars were on my side, then daily sacrifice, discipline, training, and reading the race matter less than they should—and tomorrow, when the stars are "not there," I will feel helpless. Second, it erodes self-efficacy, that is, the well-founded confidence in one's ability to organize and execute the actions necessary for a result (Bandura, 1997), which is one of the most robust predictors of performance and resilience. The repeated narrative of the stars risks shifting attention from the true drivers of performance—preparation, awareness, tenacity—toward a factor that the athlete can neither train nor control.

From superstition to routine: an application path

The work of the sports psychologist is not to ridicule rituals, but to transform their function. Superstition, ultimately, seeks to achieve something legitimate: calm, control, readiness. The pre-race routine offers the same reassurance, but anchors it to real and manageable elements. In practice, this means:

• replace the magic object with task-relevant actions (breathing, activation, keyword, mental image of the execution);
• make the sequence short, stable and repeatable, so as to build an automatism that protects concentration under pressure;
• attribute the credit for the outcome internally – to the work done – so as to strengthen the internal locus of control and self-efficacy.

This is the difference between a superstition and a real immersion and preparation path for performance: the first asks something from the sky, the second builds something in the athlete.

Conclusion

Luck is the story we tell after; preparation is what we can build before. Baldini's expression is, in all likelihood, just an affectionate way of celebrating his young people. But for those who train and accompany them, it's worth remembering a principle that research confirms: routines work because they shift control within the athlete, while superstition, at best, lends them a confidence they don't possess. Stars in sport are made on the training field.

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Bibliography

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.

Calin-Jageman, R. J., & Caldwell, T. L. (2014). Replication of the Superstition and Performance Study by Damisch, Stoberock, & Mussweiler (2010). Social Psychology, 45(3), 239–245. doi/link

Cohn, P. J., Rotella, R. J., & Lloyd, J. W. (1990). Effects of a cognitive-behavioral intervention on the pre-shot routine and performance in golf. The Sport Psychologist, 4(1), 33–42.

Cotterill, S. (2010). Pre-performance routines in sport: Current understanding and future directions. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 3(2), 132–153. doi/link

Damisch, L., Stoberock, B., & Mussweiler, T. (2010). Keep your fingers crossed! How superstition improves performance. Psychological Science, 21(7), 1014–1020. doi/link

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28. doi/link

Rupprecht, A. G. O., Tran, U. S., & Gröpel, P. (2024). The effectiveness of pre-performance routines in sports: A meta-analysis. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 17(1), 39–64. (Prima pubblicazione online 2021). doi/link

Schippers, M. C., & van Lange, P. A. M. (2006). Superstition as a psychological placebo in top sport. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36, 2532–2553. doi/link

Skinner, B. F. (1948). “Superstition” in the pigeon. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38(2), 168–172.

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