Football Intelligence: How to Maximize Your Potential?

Football intelligence could be seen as a bit controversial in some senses, because in effect this is simply an extension of growth versus fixed mindset, well that is at least how I saw this question being posed. So, in reality, football intelligence will most likely entail many different factors that impact on this phenomenon (I can see all the academics now rolling their eyes)! These factors may include things like vision, communication on and off the pitch, awareness, team-man-ship and sportsmanship, sociological, psychological, and cultural factors may also play a part (and a lot more). The way I see it, growth mindset is basically where you are open to feedback, you believe that your intelligence is not fixed and stable, and that you can improve your intelligence by training it and working on it. In opposition a fixed mindset will believe that intelligence is fixed, you either have it or you don’t, nothing else, its innate stable phenomena and it cannot be changed.

However, some may think this question is best viewed as a sliding scale, its not one or the other, its maybe a mixture, you can have innate football intelligence but with training it can improve even more. But the problem then becomes if it is innate and stable, why would a person in this category open themselves up to critique and feedback? I am not sure they would in my opinion! Maybe it is a mixture, but in reality, from what I have read, the research suggests that a growth mindset with a goal actually helps to predict higher levels of grit and therefore potential success in a given task. What does this mean? Well, it realistically means that when an athlete has a mixture of being able to create a goal for themselves and believes that they can improve within the given task to reach the goal, then the athlete will most likely manifest more determination (GRIT: see some of Angela Duckworth’s work on this). Does this mean they always achieve their goal? No. But to be honest I cannot answer that question fully, but I would imagine the likelihood is increased in these individuals. It really brings to mind the famous quote by Winston Churchill ‘’Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm’’, I really do believe this to be true too!

The poll / results

So, I wanted to better understand how football players view this phenomena (football intelligence) but also football industry professionals in my network. So, I got to work and wanted to understand what scouts, players, agents, and more thought to this question, and if football intelligence was innate (born with it) or if it can be developed (trained) over time. The responses suggested that football intelligence can be developed (74% agreed) while only 26% believed it was fixed and stable (see image of poll above). The question may need to be refined for any future polls and therefore to include a mixture of innate and developed, rather than being so binary!

It appears that both the research and scouts believe that a growth mindset will be more beneficial for football players, so what does this mean for a football player that is trying to navigate the murky worlds of football? Well, I would say, it simply means to seek feedback from others. This means coaches, scouts, agents, managers and more! I had a player come to speak to me recently and state that he thought he could play step 1 professional football, so I asked if he had played in an academy at all. ”No”. Had he played semi-professional. ”No”. Is he playing any football now. ”Yes step 5 in a 18-23 squad”. So, I gave him some feedback, honest, direct but the truth as I saw it, I said, ‘’you are currently not even playing first team football at step 5, what makes you think you can play step 1 football?’’. He did admittedly look a little disheveled and upset, so I reframed it for him and said, ‘’think about it like this, now you know where you are potentially going wrong, go home today and call your coach to ask him why you are currently not getting in the first team at step 5, that is your starting point’’. The point of the story was not that I told him and good on me, but more the fact that he was directionless and did not know how to progress, and I think I gave him direction. Direction towards the feedback, direction towards a growth mindset and ultimately a direction towards a greater football intelligence!

‘’If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable’’. Seneca

Call to action

So, while the football intelligence may be under debate, we currently are heading up a project where we help players gain feedback from industry professionals (scouts) to really maximize their football opportunities.

Therefore, if you are a football player and you are looking to take your football to the next level and you are not sure how to do it, we have created a readiness questionnaire that will give you a score on how ready you are to take the next step. The idea being that if you fill the criteria, and you want to gain expert scouting feedback, please fill in this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/1KYebWH-XlpGRJFdPa07VIqZcKDVPvbI7YJQM7JHmSMo/viewform?pli=1&pli=1&edit_requested=true

If you are a parent, or coach and you want to hear more about the project and how you could get a scout report (i.e. feedback from an industry professional) then please do send me a message on here or indeed to my emails on admin@pitchrmt.com.

References

• Albert, E., Petrie, T.A. and Moore, E.W.G., (2021). The relationship of motivational climates, mindsets, and goal orientations to grit in male adolescent soccer players. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 19(2), pp.265-278.
• Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D. and Kelly, D.R., (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(6), p.1087.
• Pigliucci, M., (2017). How to be a stoic: Ancient wisdom for modern living. Random House.

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Saul Cuttell

Saul Cuttell was appointed as Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Northampton in December 2015 and then Programme Leader for Sport Science in 2018. Saul achieved his Bachelors (Hons) degree in Sport Studies from Bedfordshire University and completed his Master’s degree in Sport and Exercise Physiology from Roehampton University and PGCE at Northampton University. Saul has also recently passed his PhD (Nov, 2024) in the muscular adaption to different forms of eccentric muscle contractions and the onset of recovery from cooling or warming. Saul is deeply embedded in the talent identification world of football and has a number of projects that seek to players maximise their opportunities.