Why Are Great Soccer Players So Rare?

An athlete’s level of greatness is often measured by the opinions of his or her peers while they’re playing and especially when they retire.  Being recognized as one of the best by those who understand what it takes is rare.  This week, one of the world’s greatest soccer players of the last 30 years retired, yet he could walk down most streets in America without being recognized.

After 17 seasons, Paul Scholes of Manchester United played in his final tribute game last week and will become a coach at the club he’s been part of since his teens.

While not a household name in the U.S. like Messi or Ronaldo or Beckham, he has earned the respect of the greatest players of his time.

“My toughest opponent? Scholes of Manchester,” said Zinedine Zidane, French World Cup Winner and 3-time world player of the year. “He is the complete midfielder. He’s almost untouchable in what he does.You rarely come across the complete player, but Scholes is as close to it as you can get.”

“In the last 15 to 20 years the best central midfielder that I have seen — the most complete — is Scholes,” said Xavi Hernandez, Barcelona midfield maestro, arguably the best midfielder in the world at the moment.  “Scholes is a spectacular player who has everything. He can play the final pass, he can score, he is strong, he never gets knocked off the ball and he doesn’t give possession away.”

“He’s always one of those people others talk about,” said David Beckham, world soccer icon and a former teammate. “Even when playing at Real Madrid, the players always said to me ‘what’s he like’? They respect him as a footballer and see him as the ultimate.”

So, what makes him different?  What is the secret ingredient that makes a few soccer players better than the thousands that come and go?  Obviously, many clubs would pay huge sums of money to find out.  Recently, two teams of researchers from the University of Queensland tried to narrow down the options.


In 2009, the university’s semi-professional soccer team was tested for their general athletic abilities across sixteen different tasks to get a measure of their inherent talents (speed, agility, strength, etc.)  Then they were paired off in games of “soccer tennis” which is what it sounds like - two players on a tennis court with a soccer ball kicking and heading it back and forth across the net.

Dr. Robbie Wilson and his team wanted to see if differences in basic athletic abilities were correlated with being a more skilled soccer player.  "There was no evidence of any correlations between maximal athletic performance and skill", concludes Dr. Wilson. "Our studies suggest that skill is just as important, if not more important, than athletic ability in determining performance of complex traits, such as performance on the football field".

Alright, so skill is at least as important as raw physical gifts.  Is skill enough?  There are plenty of skilled players who don’t become Paul Scholes.  This year, Dr. Gwendolyn David, also at the University of Queensland, picked up the trail from her mentor, Dr. Wilson.  Her team first tested 27 semi-pro players in individual soccer skills like dribbling speed, volley accuracy, and passing accuracy.

Next they observed these players in actual game situations watching for the “complex tasks” that combine the individual skills into a complete performance.  These included ball-interception, challenging another player for the ball, passing, shooting and blocking the ball.

Judging from the results, it was clear to Dr. David that superior skills do not translate to better game play.  "Athletic skill abilities measured in the lab were not associated with any measure of performance on the pitch. In other words, it's not your ability, it's what you do with it that counts,” writes Dr. David.  She recommends that youth coaches spend more time in actual game conditions rather than just focusing on individual skill development.

Despite these results, we’re still left searching for the secret of Scholes.  It seems to be more than physical abilities and soccer skills.  Others have commented on his uncanny sense of his surroundings.  His one and only manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, may sum it up best, "He has an awareness of what’s happening around him on the edge of the box which is better than most players. As a kid he always had a knack of arriving in the right area just at the right time, but he’s proving just as effective from outside the box because he’s using his experience in the right way. One of the greatest football brains Manchester United has ever had."

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See also: Artificial Intelligence Tackles Football Knowledge 
and Kicking Style Of Women Soccer Players May Cause Injury

Tiger, LeBron, Beckham - Neuromarketing In Action

Its not you, its me. That's what the CEOs at three large companies told their superstar athlete spokesmen in the last few months. First, the Buick division of GM ended its $3 million per year relationship with golfer Tiger Woods one year early. Next, the NBA's LeBron James lost his connection with Microsoft less than two years after the mega-marketing deal was announced at the 2007 All-Star game. Finally, Pepsi stopped serving uber soccer marketing star David Beckham.

All three companies issued very polite press releases blaming the struggling economy and wished their sports stars future success. Why did these three deals not work? Was the economy an easy scapegoat or were these endorsements doomed from the beginning?

For years, researchers have tried to develop models to explain consumer behavior and our emotional reactions to celebrity endorsers. Matching the right spokesperson to the right product is the key. The three leading theories for endorsement marketing, Source Credibility, Source Attractiveness and Product Match-up, guide companies in making the right choice.

Credibility combines expertise with trustworthiness. The more an athlete is perceived to know about the product, the more credibility points he earns with the audience (i.e. Tiger and golf clubs).  Attractiveness ties together likeability and familiarity of the athlete. The more a consumer wants to "be like Mike", the more effective the message. Like credibility, a logical marriage of athlete to product makes for an effective match-up. A relationship that seems forced probably won't make sense to us.

Using these models, the Tiger/Buick, LeBron/Microsoft and Beckham/Pepsi match-ups seem illogical in our minds. It may be that our mirror neurons were not firing as the advertisers expected. Located in the prefrontal cortex, these neurons can be activated by observing someone else making an action. When you watch Beckham kick a soccer ball, the same neurons light up as if you were actually kicking the ball. This reaction is the basis of imitation learning theories.

Marketers are now trying to make use of this brain function by observing consumers' brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In his recent book, Buyology, (2008, Broadway Books), Martin Lindstrom begins to apply this neuroscience to why we buy things. According to Lindstrom, Abercrombie and Fitch use this idea in their stores - the "large blow-up posters of half-naked models" make your "mirror neurons fire-up."

That might be a stretch, but Roger Dooley, consultant and author of the blog, Neuromarketing, does see a connection when using athlete endorsers. "This research suggests a basis in neuroscience for the “believe in your product” advice,” he commented. “While the individual hearing the sales pitch may be listening to the words, her brain’s mirror neurons are firing at the same time in reaction to the salesperson’s emotions, demeanor, etc. If there’s a disconnect between the words that are cognitively processed and the emotions that are mirrored, the pitch will probably be less effective. Neuromarketers should take note, too - while ads normally employ professional actors who have the ability to accurately simulate the desired emotions and state of mind, pitches that use celebrity athlete endorsers... may suffer if the viewer finds the emotions don’t match the words."

We can watch Tiger hit a golf ball with his Nike clubs and our brain can imagine (or fantasize) about swinging those same clubs. But, watching Tiger drive a Buick or imagining LeBron working on an Excel spreadsheet breaks the mirror and the connection with our hero. Of course, seeing Beckham dressed as a cowboy, surfer and gladiator while drinking a Pepsi destroyed much of his athletic credibility.

Companies will continue to invest in athletes and their persuasive powers over the masses. Forbes magazine recently named the ten most influential American athletes, as named by respondents to a survey by E-Poll Market Research.  Woods tied with Lance Armstrong for the top spot, with 36% describing them as influential. Twenty-five percent said James was influential. As long as the products they pitch match their athletic profile, our neurons will open our wallets.

Please visit my other articles on Livescience.com

Rotate It Like Ronaldo?

"Rotate it like Ronaldo" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "Bend it like Beckham", but the curving free kick is still one of the most exciting plays in soccer/football. Starting with Rivelino in the 1970 World Cup and on to the specialists of today, more players know how to do it and understand the basic physics behind it, but very few can perfect it. But, when it does happen, by chance or skill, it is the highlight of the game.



But let's take a look at this from the other side, through the eyes of the goalkeeper. Obviously, its their job to anticipate where the free kick is going and get to the spot before the ball crosses the line. He sets up his wall to, hopefully, narrow the width of the target, but he knows some players are capable of bending the ball around or over the wall towards the near post. If you watch highlights of free kick goals, you often see keepers flat-footed, just watching the ball go into the top corner. Did they guess wrong and then were not able to react? Did they guess right but misjudged the flight trajectory of the ball. How much did the sidespin or "bend" affect their perception of the exact spot where the ball will cross the line? To get an idea of the effect of spin, here's a compilation of Beckham's best free kick goals (there's a 15 second intro, then the highlights) :







Researchers at Queen's University Belfast and the University of the Mediterranean in France tried to figure this out in this paper. They wanted to compare the abilities of expert field players and expert goalkeepers to accurately predict if a free kick would result in an on-target goal or off-target non-goal. First, a bit about why the ball "bends". We can thank what's called the "Magnus Force" named after the 19th-century German physicist Gustav Magnus. As seen in the diagram below, as the ball spins counter clockwise (for a right-footed player using his instep and kicking the ball on the right side), the air pressure on the left side of the ball is lower as the spin is in the same direction as the oncoming air flow. On the right side of the ball, the spin is in the opposite direction of the air flow, building higher pressure. The ball will follow the path of least resistance, or pressure, and "bend" or curve from right to left. The speed of the spin and the velocity of the shot will determine the amount of bend. For a clockwise spin, the ball bends from left to right.







The researchers showed the players three different types of simulated kicks, a kick bent to the right, a kick bent to the left and a kick with no spin at all. They showed the players these simulations with virtual reality headsets and computer controlled "kicks" and "balls" which they could vary in flight with different programming. The balls would disappear from view at distances of 10 and 12.5 meters from the goal. The reasoning is that this cutoff would correspond with the deadline for reaction time to make a save on the ball. In other words, if the keeper does not correctly guess the final trajectory and position of the ball by this point, he most likely will not be able to physically get to the ball and make the save.







The results showed that both the players and the keepers, (all 20 were expert players from elite clubs like AC Milan, Marseille, Bayer Leverkusen, Schalke 04), were able to correctly predict the result of the kicks with no spin added. However, as 600 RPM spin, either clockwise or counter-clockwise, was added to the ball, the players success declined significantly. Interestingly, the keepers did no better, statistically, then the field players. The researchers conclusion was that the players used the "current heading direction" of the ball to predict the final result, rather than factoring the future affect of the acceleration and change in trajectory caused by the spin.



Just as we saw in the Baseball Hitting post, our human perception skill in tracking flying objects, especially those that are spinning and changing direction, are not perfect. If we understand the physics of the spinning ball, we can better guess at its path, but the pitcher or the free kick taker doesn't usually offer this information beforehand!



Craig, C.M., Berton, E., Rao, G., Fernandez, L., Bootsma, R.J. (2006). Judging where a ball will go: the case of curved free kicks in football. Naturwissenschaften, 93(2), 97-101. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-005-0071-0