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Thread: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

  1. #1

    Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    As I turned on the radio this morning I found myself listening to someone I thought sounded a bit thick but he had been a very good footballer. Great players, like Gascoigne and Beckham, are usually more likely to eat a rubik's cube than to solve it. On the pitch they have vision and awareness but as soon as the final whistle blows the lights get switched off in their brains. I can't think of any very good players who were also very intelligent. Clark Carlisle has a high IQ but on the field he is mainly remembered for his own goals and cock-ups. Phil Neale used to read War and Peace in Russian on the team bus. But that was not the Phil Neal who won loads of trophies with Liverpool. The clever Phil Neale played for Scunthorpe and Lincoln and won nothing of note at soccer, but he was very good at cricket.

    I know most of us on here are laughably stupid - why else would we post rubbish all day - but can you think of a very good footballer you would trust to think his way out a dangerous situation if you were trapped there with him? Imagine you are in a deadly maze with a spiked ball coming after the pair of you and either you or the footballer has to solve a puzzle to get out of the maze. Suppose you had to answer the puzzle using a touchscreen on the maze door wouldn't you just push or kick him out of the way and try and solve it yourself.

    Most of the footballers who used to be on Quizball in the 1960s seemed brighter than the footballers of today, but today's footballers are much better players. Is there is an inverse relationship between football ability and intelligence?

  2. #2

  3. #3

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Frank Lampard is apparently pretty smart.

    And unless I was having a very odd dream, I'm sure le Tiss has been on countdown.

  4. #4
    International jon1959's Avatar
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    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by lardy View Post
    Frank Lampard is apparently pretty smart.

    And unless I was having a very odd dream, I'm sure le Tiss has been on countdown.
    Lampard will be another poster boy for Theresa May's Barmy Army soon. Like Sol Campbell! Smart, conformist and self-serving.

  5. #5

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
    Lampard will be another poster boy for Theresa May's Barmy Army soon. Like Sol Campbell! Smart, conformist and self-serving.
    Little bit unfair on the lad being decent, does always factor that way , Sol was always a strange one ,certainly didn't mind dividing loyalties in North London , could have picked any club to go to other that Arsenal .

    we had a bright spark on our books in Adeyemi He opted to decline a university offer from Cambridge University to pursue a footballing career, with grade A Advanced Level in Biology / Chemistry & A grade in Maths.

    The Beast on the other hand, knew how to grade a good pie

  6. #6

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    There is a theory out there that to be top class at any sport you have to spend 10,000 hours practicing. So for footballers its getting that 10,000 hours in as quickly as possible, and at young and age as possible. On this basis you would imagine that schooling would suffer. As all free time is dedicated to football.

  7. #7

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    My guess, would be the biggest part of a footballers development is adolescence, perhaps there is a combination of concentrating on their football so much that school goes out of the window. Or perhaps they are not academic in the first place and feel detached from school so in turn turn to sports.

  8. #8

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by chris lee View Post
    My guess, would be the biggest part of a footballers development is adolescence, perhaps there is a combination of concentrating on their football so much that school goes out of the window. Or perhaps they are not academic in the first place and feel detached from school so in turn turn to sports.
    Spot on ,that might explain some of the poor social behaviors,having said that the rich can party as well

  9. #9

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Niall Quinn seems to have his wits about him. Eric Cantona came across as being quite bright, even if he was a little bit provocative

  10. #10

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by qccfc View Post
    There is a theory out there that to be top class at any sport you have to spend 10,000 hours practicing. So for footballers its getting that 10,000 hours in as quickly as possible, and at young and age as possible. On this basis you would imagine that schooling would suffer. As all free time is dedicated to football.
    Think that ten thousand hours thing isn't really accepted nowadays. You have to put the hours in of course, but quality training is far better than quantity.

  11. #11

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
    Lampard will be another poster boy for Theresa May's Barmy Army soon. Like Sol Campbell! Smart, conformist and self-serving.
    Was wondering if I should add the caveat that he might be smart but an ardent Tory...

  12. #12

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Most of those articles are based on unchecked facts. For example, Frank Lampard is supposed to have an IQ of 150. If you look into this you find that the story is based on a test the Chelsea team doctor gave all the players when he was looking for signs of brain injury. The doctor did not say it was an IQ test and he did not give out any scores. He just said Lampard did very well on the test, i.e. there were no signs of brain injury. John Terry also scored very highly and was in the top three. Don't try and tell me that John Terry is Mensa material and there is no evidence that Lampard has an IQ of 150.

    If you think Glen Johnson, the millionaire who was caught stealing a toilet seat, is smart then you must be even thicker than me.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/cele...Vorderman.html

  13. #13

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Gareth Southgate has an economics degree.

  14. #14
    International jon1959's Avatar
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    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Barry Horne has a first class degree in Chemistry from the University of Liverpool.

  15. #15

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
    Lampard will be another poster boy for Theresa May's Barmy Army soon. Like Sol Campbell! Smart, conformist and self-serving.
    And privately educated

  16. #16
    International jon1959's Avatar
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    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Also:

    Other bright sparks include Steve Heighway (economics), Slaven Bilic (law), Shaka Hislop (mechanical engineering), Iain Dowie (Masters in engineering), Steve Coppell (economics) and Richard Hinds (law, Open University), Arsène Wenger (economics), Gudni Bergsson (law) and Oliver Bierhoff (economics).

    https://www.theguardian.com/football...allers-degrees

  17. #17

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by Wales-Bales View Post
    Niall Quinn seems to have his wits about him. Eric Cantona came across as being quite bright, even if he was a little bit provocative
    I remember that sexy dress of his.

  18. #18

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
    Also:

    Other bright sparks include Steve Heighway (economics), Slaven Bilic (law), Shaka Hislop (mechanical engineering), Iain Dowie (Masters in engineering), Steve Coppell (economics) and Richard Hinds (law, Open University), Arsène Wenger (economics), Gudni Bergsson (law) and Oliver Bierhoff (economics).

    https://www.theguardian.com/football...allers-degrees
    Socrates (the Brazilian one) was a medical doctor.

  19. #19

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
    Also:

    Other bright sparks include Steve Heighway (economics), Slaven Bilic (law), Shaka Hislop (mechanical engineering), Iain Dowie (Masters in engineering), Steve Coppell (economics) and Richard Hinds (law, Open University), Arsène Wenger (economics), Gudni Bergsson (law) and Oliver Bierhoff (economics).

    https://www.theguardian.com/football...allers-degrees
    I don't think having a degree means you are particularly intelligent. I would be more impressed if you could find a very good player who was a member of Mensa or who won The Krypton Factor. In that maze test I mentioned above would you trust Dowie or Coppell more than yourself?

  20. #20

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by David Vincent View Post
    I don't think having a degree means you are particularly intelligent. I would be more impressed if you could find a very good player who was a member of Mensa or who won The Krypton Factor. In that maze test I mentioned above would you trust Dowie or Coppell more than yourself?
    Does solving a puzzle make people intelligent?

  21. #21

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    I heard Craig Noone once worked on Steven Gerrard's conservatory.

  22. #22

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by lardy View Post
    Does solving a puzzle make people intelligent?
    Do you mean if you do a lot of puzzles will you become intelligent? No, I don't think so. I would guess that your IQ is probably determined by genes. Some experts say there is no such thing as intelligence and IQ testing is nonsense. To me that just goes against common sense. But I'm not very clever so I might be wrong.

    If you mean is solving puzzles a sign of intelligence then I would say yes unless the puzzles come from The Sun.

  23. #23

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by David Vincent View Post
    Do you mean if you do a lot of puzzles will you become intelligent? No, I don't think so. I would guess that your IQ is probably determined by genes. Some experts say there is no such thing as intelligence and IQ testing is nonsense. To me that just goes against common sense. But I'm not very clever so I might be wrong.

    If you mean is solving puzzles a sign of intelligence then I would say yes unless the puzzles come from The Sun.
    There's lots of different types of intelligence. IQ tests don't test all of them.

    But I'm just interested why you said doing a degree isn't a sign of intelligence while your OP uses solving a single puzzle as its example of being very intelligent.

  24. #24

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by David Vincent View Post
    I don't think having a degree means you are particularly intelligent. I would be more impressed if you could find a very good player who was a member of Mensa or who won The Krypton Factor. In that maze test I mentioned above would you trust Dowie or Coppell more than yourself?
    I'm pretty sure most people would class someone with a Law/Economics degree as intelligent

  25. #25

    Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

    Quote Originally Posted by City123 View Post
    I'm pretty sure most people would class someone with a Law/Economics degree as intelligent
    I've met plenty of lawyers who I've been profoundly unimpressed with their level of intelligence, but they do seem to have high status.

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