Reply to The Development years - Direct (Kickball) versus Possession Style

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some players who make it all the way are very smart.  Others aren’t.  Not many are outright dumb, but there’s a lot more to it than IQ.   If IQ were as much king as you think it is, soccer fields would be ruled by nerds.  They are not. [/quote]

Some dumb soccer coach at a big club in the DMV told us his best players weren’t very smart (probably because the kickball style requires zero intelligence).  It goes against several scientific studies on elite soccer players around the world.

When professional soccer players were tested on “executive function”—a key aspect in memory, multitasking, and creativity—they scored significantly higher than the general population. In fact, elite players belonged to the best 2 to 5 percent of the total population, says Predrag Petrovic, Ph.D., the lead researcher and professor at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute In Stockholm analysed the cognitive performance of footballers in Sweden's top flight as well as a lower league and concluded that the players who scored most highly in the test tended to score the most goals. In addition, top division footballers outperformed lower division ones and footballers as a whole were in the top two percentile for the population by this measure. The measure the scientists used was broader than IQ, taking into account the players' creativity, cognitive flexibility, working memory and processing speed.

According to La Vanguardia magazine, the midfield of Barcelona and Spain team, has an IQ score of 170, much higher than IQ of the rest of the world. Pique was considered to have an IQ level of 140 in the past. However, in the interview of La Vanguardia, his father, Joan Pique, stated that his son had just done the IQ test again and his newest IQ score is 170. With that IQ score, Pique has overcome Frank Lampard and become the most intelligent football player in the world and also higher than Albert Einstein (160). Because of the highest IQ score, the Catalan midfield is ranked in top 0,001% super brilliant people in the world.

Many start playing young and forgo formal education which is why there is a false perception on their intelligence.

One of the scientists involved in the study, Torbjõrn Vestberg, was not surprised by the findings.
"To be a footballer you must have physical ability and speed," he said. "But that doesn't help if you don't have a brain that knows what to do."[/quote]

This is all very interesting but does not counter my point.  Not all field players need to be such masters.  Different roles require different abilities.  The smartest players may be deficient in other areas and not make it to the highest levels.  Those even smarter and mentally faster may never make it onto the field due to physical limitations, coordination deficits, etc..   Even when competing at the highest levels, the smartest players often do not carry the day.  Spain and Barcelona included.  It’s a game that encompasses many different aspects, despite the obsession with the combination of “soccer IQ” and possession shown by one or two on this forum.  [/quote]

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