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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?
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
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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.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
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.
Lampard will be another poster boy for Theresa May's Barmy Army soon. Like Sol Campbell! Smart, conformist and self-serving.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jon1959
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
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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.
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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.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
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.
Spot on ,that might explain some of the poor social behaviors,having said that the rich can party as well
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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 :biggrin:
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
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.
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.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jon1959
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... :hehe:
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jon1959
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
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Gareth Southgate has an economics degree.
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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.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jon1959
Lampard will be another poster boy for Theresa May's Barmy Army soon. Like Sol Campbell! Smart, conformist and self-serving.
And privately educated
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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
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
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 :biggrin:
I remember that sexy dress of his.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
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
Socrates (the Brazilian one) was a medical doctor.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
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
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?
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
David Vincent
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?
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
I heard Craig Noone once worked on Steven Gerrard's conservatory.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
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Originally Posted by
lardy
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.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
David Vincent
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.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
David Vincent
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
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
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Originally Posted by
City123
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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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lardy
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.
Firms like Google and Microsoft often choose job candidates based on their answers to puzzles. If in my maze example you had the chance to set the other person a puzzle to test their intelligence or you could assess their intelligence by their class and type of degree which would you choose? You can bluff and cheat your way through university and get a degree. You can get a degree in most subjects by working very hard if you are not very bright. But I would guess that some puzzles if they have not been seen before can only be done if you are very intelligent. By the way, when that spiked ball is coming towards you in the maze you would not consider things like emotional intelligence as real intelligence. You just want someone with enough brain power to solve the puzzle.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Surely footballers would have the a similar IQ to any other similar group of skilled labourers. Some very high IQ, some you wonder how they manage to hold it down, most average.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
David Vincent
Firms like Google and Microsoft often choose job candidates based on their answers to puzzles. If in my maze example you had the chance to set the other person a puzzle to test their intelligence or you could assess their intelligence by their class and type of degree which would you choose? You can bluff and cheat your way through university and get a degree. You can get a degree in most subjects by working very hard if you are not very bright. But I would guess that some puzzles if they have not been seen before can only be done if you are very intelligent. By the way, when that spiked ball is coming towards you in the maze you would not consider things like emotional intelligence as real intelligence. You just want someone with enough brain power to solve the puzzle.
But they don't recruit solely on puzzles do they? :hehe: First of all they shortlist on qualifications.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
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.
Missing out on school would leave you uneducated. Not lacking in intelligence.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Didn't Leo Fortune-West have a masters in something, or have I got him mixed up with someone else?
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
David Vincent
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.
The IQ test is predominantly mathematical and logical in nature. intelligence comes in many forms, some of which aren't based on logic, the ability to speak multiple languages is a case in point.
puzzle solving generally relies upon learning techniques, the rubiks' cube, as has been mentioned, is a good example. It is quite easy to solve when you know the various algorithms. solving the rubik's cube doesn't make you any more intelligent than someone who cannot solve it.
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
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. .
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Re: Is intelligence a handicap in football ?
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?