S. asks "do you need intelligence to play football"
"I have nothing to prove and I proved it today on the field"
"You have to give the minimum maximum"
"I'm very happy that we scored an away goal, especially in an away game"
"Since the match against France, some six or seven years have passed, I was 20 years old then, today I am 29 years old."
"I will play in Europe or Spain"
Quotes such as these from well-known footballers seemingly provide the answer, a branch whose stars obviously do not require intelligence. In the list of those who despise the wisdom of the footballer, you can find giants of spirit like Isaiah Leibovich who defined the game as "twenty-two hooligans running after one ball". Max Nordau, one of the fathers of Zionism, avid sports fan, creator of the "Muscle Jewry" vision, and who passionately promoted physical education took the trouble to exclude football "spiritual agility, clarity of perception and sharpness are the prerequisites necessary for flexibility and physical diligence. No amount of muscle power is capable of turning a stupid, stupid and slow-moving creature into an athlete. I don't know any kind of sport, except for the rough and spiritless football where the strength of the clumsy and brutal guy will be better than the strength of the spirited man" (ironically today a Jerusalem soccer team is named after Nordau). Yet psychological research challenges the stupid footballer assumption.
What is intelligence?
Many faces for intelligence and plenty of definitions. In a very broad sense, it is the individual's ability to achieve goals, understand his environment and solve problems through thought. It is, therefore, a multifaceted concept just like the goals, the problems, and the environment in which they arise. In soccer, the goal is to move a ball in a crowded field to a goal guarded by the feet of the opposing team. To win you need technical skill and coordination ("ball control" in the language of the broadcasters), physical fitness and what is important in his case: spatial perception and quick decision making. These two talents are intertwined; A soccer player has to build a picture of the field that includes opposing players, his team players, position and direction of the ball, all in fast motion. This image gets old quickly and the player has to scan the field and update it every 5 seconds. The footballer needs to translate this spatial perception into decisions. A decision, which must be made in real time during strenuous physical activity, means locating, evaluating and utilizing available spaces. In attack, the player must locate and utilize free spaces to move the ball and in defense to block space that could be used by the opponent. Such spatial-dynamic intelligence will not be expressed in verbal, mathematical or logical ability of the type required in classic psychometric tests, but psychologists have tools to test such intelligences as well. For example, the psychologist Erkut Konter used non-verbal tests that were originally developed for examinees who are unable to receive instructions or express themselves verbally (for example due to deafness or lack of control of the examiner's language). In such tests it is possible to rate the ability to absorb, understand and apply visual information (shape, location, movement) without biases arising from differences in culture or ability to express. In this way, Kutner found a match between the level of play (the league) and "non-verbal intelligence" and thus advanced to the scientific confirmation of the diagnosis formulated by Alon Mizrahi (Haaviron) "Footballers are smart people, we have a head on our shoulders".
And what about learning ability? To be a soccer player in the Premier League, a person has to devote many years of his life to training. Almost every professional soccer player started his sporting career as a child and persisted in this occupation throughout adolescence and beyond. Such continuity of effort requires, in addition to commitment and motivation, also ability Self-direction in learning (Self-regulated learning) meaning achieving a high level of and control over thoughts and emotions in order to identify modes of behavior and practice that will yield the greatest improvement in ability. A good soccer player creates feedback mechanisms for himself that direct him to invest his physical and mental effort in the most effective way, which means that a high level of self-awareness is required of him.
Why are penalties missed?
But there is another type of intelligence, one that has only been recognized in recent years, that turns out to be at least as important to an athlete as technique and fitness. Mark Wilson (Mark Wilson) and his partners examined the puzzle that bothers every soccer watcher: why do they miss penalties? Every professional soccer player has the kicking skills required to score from a stationary position only 11 meters away from the goal, therefore close to 100% of the penalties should have resulted in a goal. According to Wilson, what the players lack and causes them to miss about a third of the penalties is a surprising component: emotional intelligence. This intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand emotions (yours and others) and control them instead of being carried away by them. It's a bit difficult to link awareness of emotions and empathy to a masculine and sweaty field like football, but the field of sports psychology brings us surprises. If we go back to the white spot and the penalty, the player is supposed to concentrate on the ball and the goal: a rectangle 7.3 meters long and 2.4 meters high. The goalkeeper can almost never stop a properly kicked penalty, so the correct and well-known way to kick is to simply ignore it. But human emotion has its own laws, a long evolution has tamed us so that in stressful situations we will try to focus our attention on the dangers and obstacles in the environment and the source of danger to which the emotion sweeps is the gatekeeper. The one who focuses his gaze on the "opponent" will kick in the same direction, meaning he will make the worst kick. Wilson tested footballers in penalties in two situations: in a relaxed practice and one that created artificial tension (the kicker was told that he was being tested or a monetary reward was offered). Those players who kicked well into the corners in practice kicks started kicking at a distinctly smaller angle (ie more to the center) under pressure. During the game, what is interpreted in the eyes of the viewer as "egoism" - a solo breakthrough in situations where a pass is requested is sometimes the result of the same emotional mechanism that leads to focusing on the target and the opponents at the expense of the teammates. Understanding and controlling emotions is important in many other aspects of the sports career, excitement for example improves endurance but sabotages coordination and good players are supposed to control the degree of excitement they experience. An athlete has to deal with stress, frustration and moods of himself and his friends, all while being the center of attention of the crowd. Emotional intelligence is also essential in dealing fruitfully with disappointments, in particular the ability to mentally reconstruct misses and mistakes in order to learn from them without sinking into depression. A study that focused on Olympic champions in various disciplines found that almost all of them achieved excellent results in measures of emotional intelligence such as dealing with and controlling anxiety, confidence, concentration and ignoring distractions, diligence, hope and optimism. Emotions are a powerful tool to create motivation, but the player needs to know how to turn them off and switch to "automatic pilot" when the goal requires skills that have been assimilated and performed well, rather without over-awareness. When moving from the individuals on the medal stand to the team sport, not only the emotional intelligence is important, but also the ability to read, understand and adapt to the emotions of your teammates. David Crombie tested the emotional intelligence of cricket players and according to his calculations over 60% of the differences in ability between the groups are due to the differences in the emotional IQ of the players. In this way, science confirms the intelligent diagnosis of former soccer player Danny Neumann "the essential difference between the two teams is the players".
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More of the topic in Hayadan:
8 תגובות
And not only footballers know how to issue pearls:
"I'm like a success story - only without success" (Lazy Gordon - basketball)
"Good night, dear viewers, rest in peace" (Moshe Gertel - no need to introduce).
"Do you watch football?" (Dan Shilon asks Andrea Bocelli - he is blind!!!)
"Now Morgan Hamm, Paul Hamm's twin brother, will be on the phone. I wonder if they were born on the exact same date" (Danny Levinstein - gymnastics commentator)
Not all of Mizrahi's quotes
"I am very happy that we scored an away goal, especially in an away game" - by the King of Maccabi (Nimani)
"Since the match against France, some six-seven years have passed, I was 20 years old then, today I am 29 years old" - of the greatest of his generation (Berkovic)
"The essential difference between the two teams is the players" - Neumann said
Reminds me of the quote that you won't find on the net anyway:
"He (the coach) has a few more guns in his barrel" - I think the commentator Nir Levin said in one of Maccabi Haifa's games
All the quotes here are from the same actor, this is an actor not nearly as smart as the nonsense of the writer of the article
Interesting article. I would like to add some insights regarding the relationship between ability and level of play and between intelligence, based on my personal experience (I played soccer for several years in the children's and boys' teams of a club that was then considered a luxury club in Israeli terms (Hapoel Tel Aviv), and based on long-term observation of soccer games and the elements of performance of elite level players.
1. The type of intelligence varies as a function of the player's ideal position in the team formation. For this matter, not the brakeman 1,2 (in the conventional formation) as the rear midfielder 5, 50-50 midfielder, attacking midfielders or striker 9.
2. Already in the boys', youth's and young people's groups - it is possible to notice that the players are more intelligent than the general offer. For this matter, it is important to differentiate between intelligence and formal and informal education. The players are less educated (and sometimes - much less) than the general average in society, but this is a matter of belonging to the socio-economic status of a player, to the cultural patterns of the environment and the paving paths of low social strata, and not a matter of intelligence.
3. Over time, the more successful footballers are also the ones who are more intelligent in general. In fact, the phenomenon is already seen in boy groups, and even more so in the youth and young adults.
4. In general, players whose general intelligence is higher function in the link positions (including back link). However, top-class forward 9s or simulated 9s display extraordinary intelligence in terms of their spatial perception, and attacking defenders can be particularly creative.
5. An excellent player is very often a player who not only learned from his mistakes, but a player who personally and deliberately observed and analyzed, in a quasi-research approach, the playing behavior of other players. It starts with exploring and learning the 'base' - the dribbling, passing and kicking techniques. A personal example - I remember quite early in my "career" I realized that I should observe and study some standards of effective passing exercises against an opposing player ("dribble") from players especially talented in dribbling, and practice them well until absolute control. After spending many hours watching, I diagnosed several standards of dribbling moves, of which five were particularly effective. After practice, I was reborn as an excellent player for my age, and I could still progress in this subject. The learning process also touches on other important topics: the movement with and without the ball, tactical vision and rules for quick and realistic decision-making. A good player is an intelligent player, he is a learning player of the "base"; Observes and analyzes as a researcher, and finally practices well. After all that, if the player is particularly in-depth and/or creative, he may develop knowledge and skills at higher and more detailed resolutions, and be really great, and I've seen it in practice. Such a player can also develop into a good coach in the future.
6. A player who hits a lot sometimes experiences a gradual decline in particularly fine abilities over time, for example in dribbling. This may happen to top class players as well. My guess is that the intelligence needed for subtle abilities is simply compromised by the concussions that are surely caused by any blow that is powerful enough. This may be what happened to Cristiano Ronaldo, for example (referring to his changing ability as a dribbling artist throughout his career). This, in addition to the fact that over the years he tended to specialize as an ultimate scorer.
Unfortunately, no matter what the starting IQ level of a soccer player is, after 5-6 hits with the ball it drops to half of what it was. Playing with the head should be prohibited - in football only playing with the feet should be allowed. In American football, they have already investigated the matter and understand what is happening, only that too much money is involved and the managers do not care about the players. (In American football there are no hits on the ball, but many head-to-head or player-to-player collisions between players, which are not considered a pass.
These are 22 idiots running after a ball
Even if a certain "intelligence" is needed
to play football
After all, judging by the "pearls" cited at the beginning
or according to the appearances of Israeli footballers in the media
and in "reality" programs,
There is no doubt that many of them are ignorant bordering on idiots...
Mistake !!!
The main reason for missing penalties is - pressure!
In any field stress causes mistakes that under other circumstances would not have occurred.
Therefore, among the other qualities that a football player needs - he must be cold
Spirit or as a football commentator once said about Messi: he has ice in his veins...