The aim of this study was to gain further insights into the effects of explicit contextual priors (CP) and physical load (PL) on performance and underlying perceptual and cognitive processes during action anticipation in soccer. On a video-based task, expert soccer players had to predict the imminent actions of an opponent under a 2 CP (with, without) x 3 PL (low, moderate, high) repeated measures design. Anticipation accuracy, gaze behavior, and self-rating of cognitive load were measured under conditions of low (rest), moderate (70% HRreserve), and high (90% HRreserve) PL, manipulated through a running protocol. Under each PL condition, the players performed the anticipation task both with and without CP pertaining to the action tendencies of the oncoming opponent. Tentative results from 21 participants reveal higher anticipation accuracy with, compared to without, CP under low PL (with CP = 70% ± 10 [M ± SD], without CP = 64% ± 10; d = 0.56) and moderate PL (with CP = 78% ± 10, without CP = 70% ± 12; d = 0.72), but not under high PL (with CP = 69% ± 12, without CP = 72% ± 7; d = 0.33). Both with and without CP, cognitive load increased between low and moderate PL (d = 1.24–1.25) and between moderate and high PL (d = 0.89–0.91). Our preliminary findings suggest that the performance-enhancing effects of CP may diminish under conditions of high PL. This effect could possibly be explained by a detraction from the limited resources of working memory during high PL, which may hamper the cognitively demanding process of acquiring and integrating visual information with CP during anticipation (see Gredin et al., 2020). Further data collection and analysis of visual-search strategies within this on-going study are needed to verify this suggestion.