Is intelligence a handicap in football ?

[David Vincent]

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?

[jon1959]

For what it's worth:


http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1...h-their-talent

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/row-ze...xi-top-6284835

https://www.studyinternational.com/n...mmdocmS2d0G.97

https://www.footballfancast.com/prem...s-in-the-world

[David Vincent]

For what it's worth:


http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1...h-their-talent

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/row-ze...xi-top-6284835

https://www.studyinternational.com/n...mmdocmS2d0G.97

https://www.footballfancast.com/prem...s-in-the-world

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

[Cyclops]

Gareth Southgate has an economics degree.

[jon1959]

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

[lardy]

Frank Lampard is apparently pretty smart.

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

[jon1959]

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.

[life on mars]

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

[qccfc]

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.

[lardy]

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.

[NYCBlue]

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.

Missing out on school would leave you uneducated. Not lacking in intelligence.

[chris lee]

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.

[life on mars]

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

[lardy]

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...

[Rjk]

Lampard will be another poster boy for Theresa May's Barmy Army soon. Like Sol Campbell! Smart, conformist and self-serving.

And privately educated

[jon1959]

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

[Taunton Blue Genie]

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.

[David Vincent]

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?

[Wales-Bales]

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

[Taunton Blue Genie]

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.

[Colonel Cærdiffi]

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

[Eric the Half a Bee]

Didn't Leo Fortune-West have a masters in something, or have I got him mixed up with someone else?

[City123]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...new-study.html

[the other bob wilson]

I used to hear the term "footballing intelligence" and groan, but I now think I was wrong to do so. Fifteen years or so ago, Wayne Rooney burst on to the scene and it's easy now to forget just how good he was between the ages of sixteen to eighteen. A fierce drive and will to win had much to do with that and, of course, there was a level of talent that you don't usually see displayed so much in one so young, but he was also a very intelligent footballer.

He's better in front of the media now, but I'm sure an interview with the sixteen year old Rooney would have been toe curlingly embarrassing - I'm not being big headed when I say that the sixteen year old me would have eaten him alive in a general knowledge quiz, because I reckon at least three quarters of the population would have done so, yet put me, and that seventy five per cent, on a football pitch against him and he would have made the right decisions and take then right options in a purely instinctive way that would have left the rest of us flummoxed.

All of that doesn't really answer the question that was set in the thread title though. I believe intelligent people tend to think about things a lot more than less intelligent ones and, in all sorts of walks of life, that can sometimes be a disadvantage - while the more intelligent person ponders the consequences of the action they are about to take, the less intelligent one has often nipped in and taken what turns out to have been the correct decision without ever contemplating what may happen if they are wrong.

There have been enough fine players named in this thread to disprove any theory that intelligent people do not make good footballers, but, apart from Socrates and maybe Bilic, none of them could really justify the description "great" - I do think the more cerebral footballers may lack the spontaneity which the very best always have. .

[the other bob wilson]

One other thing, what seven letter City player surname is in that list of letters Clark Carlisle is looking at in that Daily Telegraph link above?