Much like when one is of a religious faith, there is no real empirical evidence to suggest that it is true. That's why we use the word "faith". Natural talent is perhaps different to natural ability. Natural ability means that one has a propensity to be able to do something better due to their DNA. Natural talent, by some vantage points, can be considered an oxymoron. Talent usually requires some form of practise, where as natural implies the opposite. In a complex and diverse sport such as football, there is no way that natural talent can be a thing. That's not to say that some players may have a natural propensity to develop muscle better than others, or that they may be taller, have more fast twitch fibres and thus be able to accelerate quicker, but such factors are only small, tiny, minute advantages. The rest is all down to technique and decision making. There's nothing natural about that.
Like a lot of the misinformation within the conventional wisdom of football, it probably stems from grossly overestimating certain factors. We'll start by looking at relative age effect.
Stealing from Wikipedia, relative age effect is used to describe a bias, evident in the upper echelons of youth sport and academia, where participation is higher amongst those born early in the relevant selection period than would be expected from the normalised distribution of live births. The football selection season in England follows the school year, which is from September until August. A child born on September 1st is a year older than a child born August 31st the following year, yet they end up in the same class and the same team. At the age of six, it makes the first child 17% older than the second child. That's an extra year of growing, and an extra year of skill development. With that comes height, strength, posture, agility, balance, coordination, speed, and cognitive processing. If you were to have an advantage in all those areas, simply because you were born twelve months earlier, you'd appear to be naturally talented when compared to your peers in the same group.
Other countries in Europe do it from January to December, putting them in line with the UEFA youth competitions.
A blogger on the site Blueprint Tennis has discussed similar themes before. Many like to attack the 10,000 hours rule. The term "rule" is used loosely. I have written about this several times, so here's a brief recap:
- 10,000 hour rule is not a rule.
- The amount of time taken to achieve expert level in any given skill will depend on the complexities of the skills required to learn. Your skill may only require 4,000 hours, or it may require 10,000 hours.
- Some skills are age specific. You will not become a world class gymnast without intense training from a very young age. The physiology of an older gymnast, or a child starting out too old, will simply not allow it. A skill like chess which is more down to tactics and decision making than any such technical skill (is the way you move the pieces with your fingers a skill?) can be mastered at an older age.
- The 10,000 (or whatever) hours are pointless if you are practising poorly, working on the wrong things, or are not giving it your all. The quality of practice is similar in importance to the quantity of practice. One great training session does not make you a champion, and 10,000 poor training sessions will only make you consistent at being terrible.
- Expert level also depends on the level of competitors. Hundreds of millions of people play football worldwide. Even with a lifetime of devotion, the chances of reaching the top are slim. Compare that to a new sport that is not professionalised like ultimate frisbee (super rad!) with less competitors, it's a shorter journey to the top. Case in point, the people that were not good enough at any other sport at my college joined the ultimate frisbee team. They ended up coming third in the world championships.
It's the power of practice. And remember kids, it's not practice makes perfect, it's practice makes permanent. Practise the wrong things and you'll be bad at it. Everything to do with success has an element of consistency. Remember, as Aristotle said; "We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit." And one more for luck; "Under pressure, you don't rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. That's why we train so hard."
Of course, the dissenters are not yet convinced. Not even flinching. Don't worry, there's a long way to go yet. Continuing with skill development, it can take well over ten years of training to be able to competently execute most football skills. And outfield players do not peak until they are twenty-eight years old. There's so much learning and growing to be done.
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| Typical of the kind of stats displayed for each player on Football Manager. |
Seems quite in depth, right? Any decent coach will tell you that's by no mean an exhaustive list. Each of the terms are far too broad. Let's analyse. Take crossing. It seems fairly simple. How well can a player cross? According to this, Lionel Messi is rated as 14/20. Decent enough. Do I now feel confident in knowing what to expect from him if he's in a crossing position? Absolutely not. He may be great at cut-backs, but awful at whips. He might be able to send one in from deep, but not be able to float one from near. Are we talking about inside foot, outside foot, laces, or toes? Driven, floated, whipped, bent, drilled, chipped, curled etc. It also tells us nothing about his decision making. The crossing technique might be good, but does he do it too early or too late? Can he pinpoint his target, or does he consistently search for dangerous areas? Each of those crossing techniques is very hard to master, and few players can do them all. We also have to compound the technical ability with the tactical understanding and decision making. How can a player be naturally talented when there are so many skills that require learning and intense practise? How can a player be naturally talented, when even after the technical skills are developed, more importantly they need to develop the game intelligence to go with it?
Naturally talented might be a misunderstanding of good technique. I've heard a lot of dads explain boys (girls are never naturally talented, as the are not supposed to play football) as naturally talented. I don't see it like that. I see it as a boy that has, either through good posture or good coaching, developed a really smooth and effective technique, and has worked on that technique to incorporate it into muscle memory, making it appear like a natural response to the game around him. With no evidence, we're going on hunches, and misinterpreting good, solid, developed technique as being naturally talented.
Are there even enough strands of DNA to have all these skills programmed into from birth? People are not born to play football. We've been playing football as a species for little over 150 years. Footballers have been celebrities for about forty years. There's been not enough time for natural selection to take place, forcing us to mate based on potential footballing ability. Our survival does not depend upon being good at football (mine does), and as such, we're not choosing mates like this. like with animals and selective breeding. These days, when people are experiencing the joys of children with multiple partners, it's very much unselective breeding. The muscle memory involved with the different kicking techniques of a size five football are not being passed down from parents to kids, nor are the cognitive solutions to tactical situations that would create game intelligence. As football changes every ten years, my dad would have passed onto me being able to pass back to the goalkeeper, and him being allowed to pick the ball up. My Grandad's dad would have passed onto him goalkeepers being able to pick the ball up anywhere in their own half. There's no evolutionary advantage to be gained from being a good footballer.
I'm being a bit silly, but it's just not happening. If there were such a thing as natural talent, then we would see the children of successful players also becoming successful players. That's so incredibly rare that one could be forgiven for thinking it's entirely down to this myth of skill development and hard work. If we pretend for a moment that there is such a thing as natural talent, then surely Johan Cruyff would have passed it onto his son. We can then pretend that Jordi Cruyff was naturally talented. So why did he fail as a footballer? Why did he amount to so little? Could it be that any natural advantage passed onto him through his DNA is actually so insignificant when compared to the actual important things that contribute towards the development of top players?
So what is it then, that makes a footballer naturally talented? They're not born with the ability to pass and shoot. We know that. Mental skills are largely learnt, though some can be passed down through genetics. Is it something to do with athleticism? Is that what we're on about when we describe a footballer as naturally talented? What we mean is that they appear to have more speed, strength, and coordination. Okay. I can kind of see that. Let's make a comparison between the beast of Romelu Lukaku and the slight frame of Lionel Messi. Lukaku is twice the man Messi is, yet Messi is an infinitely more talented footballer. And that's the key word. TALENT. He developed his skills to an insane level. That's not difficult to understand. There is no magical force. There are no midichlorians. PEOPLE PRACTISE MORE AND DO BETTER PRACTICE. REPEATEDLY. OVER DECADES. And when questioned about his strength, Lukaku said he used to run to school every day, and do a large number of press-ups. His frame would have been given to him by genetics, but it was Lukaku himself that added the muscle. Then again, I believe it's only the English and the Americans that are impressed by that anyway. Messi, Iniesta, and Xavi would have been discarded at an early age due to their size if they were English.
So what is it then, that makes a footballer naturally talented? They're not born with the ability to pass and shoot. We know that. Mental skills are largely learnt, though some can be passed down through genetics. Is it something to do with athleticism? Is that what we're on about when we describe a footballer as naturally talented? What we mean is that they appear to have more speed, strength, and coordination. Okay. I can kind of see that. Let's make a comparison between the beast of Romelu Lukaku and the slight frame of Lionel Messi. Lukaku is twice the man Messi is, yet Messi is an infinitely more talented footballer. And that's the key word. TALENT. He developed his skills to an insane level. That's not difficult to understand. There is no magical force. There are no midichlorians. PEOPLE PRACTISE MORE AND DO BETTER PRACTICE. REPEATEDLY. OVER DECADES. And when questioned about his strength, Lukaku said he used to run to school every day, and do a large number of press-ups. His frame would have been given to him by genetics, but it was Lukaku himself that added the muscle. Then again, I believe it's only the English and the Americans that are impressed by that anyway. Messi, Iniesta, and Xavi would have been discarded at an early age due to their size if they were English.
As I have talked about in previous blogs, it's nothing more, nothing less, than the coaching, environment, and opportunity afforded to young players that makes them who they are. Football is too complex in terms of skills and decisions to have any such natural abilities. The only natural elements are things that can work against people. For instance, height is not that important, unless you are really short. Speed isn't that important, unless you are really slow. There will be the occasional header where the far taller player will win it easily, or the really fast player will race to the ball, and no one can stop him. Those advantages happen a few times per game. Just recently, with Portsmouth, we had an exceptionally fast winger. It was like an adult racing against children. I saw her give both the opposition winger and full back a head start, and still got to the ball first. We've adjusted our team to make use of this a few times. But if her speed were truly that important, we'd be winning 10-0 every game, and she'd be getting all the assists and goals. We still need to be able to create space for her, deliver the correct pass to her, and for her to time her run right, receive the ball appropriately, make the correct decision to dribble, pass, shoot, cross, and to execute that skill effectively. Per game, her rapid speed will probably give us somewhere between three and seven opportunities to create an attack that we wouldn't have had otherwise. It sounds like a lot, but when you consider it's a ninety minute game, it's only a small advantage. Still an advantage, but if she was either tactically stupid, or couldn't kick a ball, then her speed would be useless.
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| Is speed natural? To a very, very minute point. It's 99% down to practice. And a fast player with no skill is just a 100m sprinter that wears shinpads. Or Theo Walcott. |
This article is easily one of the best I have ever read about football. The author is John Bolster working for Howler Magazine. Many Americans who don't know the game ask "What would happen if America's best athletes all played soccer?" Well, since they would know nothing about tactics, and would have a complete lack of relevant skill sets, despite their size, strength, and speed, they would be destroyed. Do you really think the New England Patriots would beat Barcelona at football? They'd struggle to get the ball off my U13s. As Cruyff said; "You play football with your head. Your legs are only there to help."
We'd all like our players to be stronger, tougher, and faster, but this can never make up for skill and decision making. If two teams were equal in terms of technique and tactics, you could then bet on the more athletic team. What this question does is it displays a gross misunderstanding of the skills required to play football, and grossly overestimates the physical element. I'd rather have a tall goalkeeper than a short goalkeeper, but I'm going to pick whichever one makes the most saves.
If we're going to examine kids that are around seven years old, we will note that some fit the vague description of naturally talented. What we're seeing here, which can sometimes be described by relative age effect, could also be from experience in other sports. Until the age of seven, it doesn't really matter what sport they're playing, as long as they're active. Their brains can't understand tactics yet, so that's not a problem, and most skills are so basic for competency at that age, they can be learnt in a short time... providing that they have agility, balance, and coordination. Before, I have used the example of the seven year old boy that came to play football for me in Mexico. He'd not played football before, but he took off like a natural. He'd been an avid swimmer, and was very sporty. He started off behind the other boys initially, as they had a basic understanding of the game that he didn't, as well as a skill set. But he could run, speed up and slow down, change direction, jump, and stand on one leg. Within weeks, he no longer looked like a beginner. And because he loved being active, and not specifically football, he did more sport in the week than most other players, and yet would still find time to kick a ball around for fun. Compare him, with prior sport experience, to the other beginners at seven, with no sport experience, and it's easy to see why he slotted into our football team with ease, and the complete sporting novices just didn't take to football. There was nothing natural about it. Even at such an early stage, experience counts for so much.
If we were to do an example right now, I am twenty-seven, and my girlfriend is twenty-five. Neither of us play badminton. If we both started competing, who would win? It should be even, as we're both beginners, but that's not true, due to all the transferable skills from other sports. I am far more sporty and athletic than she is. She was a girl raised in a Catholic society in a second world country. Women there are not yet people. And as such, she played very little sport. On the other hand, I played football from the day I could walk. I go to the gym most days, and have tried many other sports either through school or recreationally along the way. One could quite easily assume that there would be no contest. I've had no badminton lessons. What I would have is the ability to move quicker with my footwork, far better hand-eye coordination, the ability to recognise space and read visual cues such as body position, and to make quick decisions while moving. I'd probably make many unforced errors, because I am a badminton novice. I'd hit the net and miss the shuttlecock. She still wouldn't stand a chance though, because she'd be doing that and more. So are these kids we're scrutinising naturally talented, or have they just been more active at a fundamental stage?
Author Josh Kaufman talks about skill acquisition. "The first 20 hours - how to learn anything."
Skill acquisition, although we have to consider the needs of the learner, it's more down to the way the message is conveyed. Who remembers learning languages parrot fashion, with no real application to the real world? If you want us to speak foreign languages, then let us speak and interact, not copy tenses. It's the equivalent of dribbling around cones in a straight line. What does that actually teach you about football? It's down to the coach or the teacher.
The 10 Principles of Rapid Skill Acquisition:
- Choose a lovable problem - when you become so curious about something that other things fall away, at least temporarily. Over the next month, I will apply RSA to learn Drupal, a web-publishing platform, from the ground up. I already use Drupal in my work at H-Net, but I want to have a better grasp of how the backend functions to troubleshoot technical problems.
- Focus your energy on one skill at a time. Instead of trying to brush up on language skills, learn Python (a programming language), and Drupal, I am only focusing on Drupal.
- Define your target performance level. Visualize what you'd like to be able to do when you have acquired the skill. I want to be able to build a Drupal site from installation on a server to the finished product and be familiar with additional plugins I can use to improve the site.
- Deconstruct the skill into sub skills. For example, I already know how to install a content management system (CMS) on a server through file transfer, but I need to learn how to create a MySQL Database for Drupal as part of the installation process.
- Obtain critical tools. For example, for yoga, you would want to have a mat, comfortable clothing, and a bottle of water. To learn Drupal, I need my laptop, a fast internet connection, and a resource book or two.
- Eliminate barriers to practice. This one is really important! During the time you practice, turn off the TV, sign out of email, and at least silence your phone. Close all other browser tabs and turn off all social media sites and apps if working on your computer. Let others know you’ll be unavailable (unless there’s an emergency, of course) for at least 90 minutes. Plan ahead. Finally, address any emotional blocks, such as fear, doubt, or embarrassment by talking through your anxieties with a trusted friend and establishing an accountability system for practice time (not for perfection!)
- Make dedicated time for practice. Schedule it on your calendar and set a reminder. If it’s difficult to find a time, keep a time log and choose to eliminate low-value uses of time (checking Facebook for an hour during planned work-time, for instance). Make time for at least 90 minutes of practice a day. Commit to practicing for at least 20 hours.
- Create fast feedback loops. Look for tools like computer programs or training aids online. Ask other grad students, family, or friends who know what you’re trying to learn to serve as coaches. Capture devices like video cameras can give you a sense of how you're performing. Integrate as many feedback loops as you can into your practice. While I’m learning Drupal, I have a couple of guides that walk through steps and provide examples of what my work should look like at each stage. I also know several people who understand how the backend of Drupal works who can help if I get stuck.
- Practice by the clock in short bursts. Try using the Pomodoro technique: Set a count-down timer for 25 minutes. Once you start the timer, you must practice until it goes off. Take a five minute break to stretch, clear your mind, and then get back to it! Shoot for 3 Pomodoros a day.
- Emphasize quantity and speed. Don't focus on practicing perfectly! This is going to be a hard one for us, but it, too, is very important—maybe even the most important step to help us get past some of our common mental blocks.
A final note: Relying on willpower to overcome distractions is fighting a losing battle. We only have so much willpower at our disposal each day, and it's best to use that willpower wisely. Use it to remove soft barriers to practice. By rearranging your environment to make it as easy as possible to practice, you'll acquire the skill in far less time.
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| I smile better than she does. |
Anna has skills broken down for her in ways that are easy to understand, and plays fun games that provide plenty of repetition and decision making. She's encouraged to think and enjoys being with her new teammates. Belinda begins the session by running laps because her and her U6 teammates are not deemed fit enough by the coach. Most of the session is spent waiting her turn to dribble around cones while being screamed at.
In the games, Anna has been able to play in two different positions, understands when it is her time to come off, and doesn't mind taking a turn in goal since the team believes in fairness. Belinda doesn't get much time on the pitch because she wasn't very good at dribbling around the cones. She has the chance to go in goal, but when she did so before, she made a very silly mistake, and was shouted at, so left the game in tears.
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| I ride camels better than her. |
A year later, and Anna seems like a naturally talented player. She has good posture, has improved her speed, can talk confidently with her teammates, and has learnt how to turn, dribble, and pass. Belinda persisted for a while, but it was clear she was not enjoying it. Her parents took her out of the Wanderers team to join Anna's Rovers. Thanks to the brilliant rules of some youth leagues, Belinda wasn't able to play with Anna and her new teammates for the rest of that season, as she'd already played for Wanderers. Belinda is starting to enjoy training more, but has found it hard to break into a group of friends that are already established. She's one of the weaker players in the team, and the other players don't pass to her in training because she keeps making mistakes. She's very sad she doesn't get to take part in the games, and can't understand why.
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| I watch ice hockey better than her. |
It's likely that many can relate such a story. Poor Old Granddad. He has no idea about child development and skill acquisition, and has not see what his two granddaughters have been doing in training and games. He's taken a snapshot of their ability, and with his misinformed opinion, come to a wildly inaccurate conclusion. Others within earshot may potentially nod their heads and agree. Anna might believe she has a gift, and Belinda might believe she is naturally inferior. Remember that we need to praise effort, and not talent. This is the growth v fixed mindset.
Set a high bar and help students reach it.
- 1. Lack of focus on outcomes
We are now seeing some educators piling on the praise for effort regardless of whether learning and progress have taken place. Our goal should be to teach students that effort is a means to learning and progress. The goal is not simply to make kids feel good about their lack of progress.
When students try hard but fail to progress, we can begin by appreciating their effort, but then we need to sit with them and say, “Show me what you’ve tried, and let’s figure out what you can try next” or “Tell me exactly what your thought process was when you did it this way, and let’s see if there are other ways that you can try.”
The teacher and student can then take steps to collaborate on how to move forward more effectively. In fact, successful teachers and tutors hold all students to high standards but help them to move toward those standards.
Students need an arsenal of things to do when they are confronting difficult work, not just brute force. Simply telling children “Try harder and you’ll get it” is often misleading. A growth mindset is not just about praising effort regardless of outcome: if students persevere with ineffective strategies, they may end up feeling particularly inadequate.
- 2. Praise isn’t just for when students struggle
A parent recently lamented to me that it was hard not to praise her child’s wonderful accomplishments and only praise her when she was struggling. I told her that of course she could praise the wonderful accomplishments, but she should tie them to what the child did – the strategies she used, the effort she put in, or the information and input she sought. We want students to understand that a good process leads to good learning. Any notion that growth mindset applies only to situations where a child is struggling is incorrect.
Of course, I understand that educators want to take the emphasis off outcomes like test scores. So do I. But I don’t want to take the emphasis off learning and progress. I want students to enjoy and to relish their learning and progress. With educators’ help, I want students to find their schoolwork meaningful and I want them to take pride in their growing skills and understanding.
So, praise the effort not the outcome? Let’s change that to: praise the effort (as well as the strategies, focus, perseverance and information-seeking) in relation to the outcome – with particular emphasis on learning and progress. True, it may not roll off of the tongue quite as easily, but it will certainly help our students more.
Talent is not a gift, it's a skill. These talented and successful players have worked very hard at honing their skills. You can say they may have been lucky with right time and right place, and had a favourable scenario. What you can't say is they didn't work hard when the opportunity arose. Naturally talented footballers have somehow become a thing, without it ever really being thought about. People seemed to have assumed that these amazingly talented humans must have had some kind of genetic gift. That's the only plausible explanation. Kind of like explaining everything by the use of gods. There's a moon god that comes out at night, and it's the sun god that makes our plants grow. We can explain away without much thought. Since we don't know what it really is, a nice easy explanation (which is also hard to prove) will suffice. For those without curiosity, the soundbite is enough. In some ways, it can also be a defence mechanism. "I worked hard enough to be a professional footballer, but I just didn't have the genes." Ridiculous, really.
Talent means there is a skill involved, and skills are not innate, which is what makes them different to reflexes. Skills are learnt, whereas reflexes can be developed, but many are natural. So the meaning of natural talent, at least in the way the users try to use it, doesn't actually mean that at all. By talent, they mean physical trait, like speed, strength, or coordination. What kind of advantage one is given of each attribute at birth is debatable. So instead of natural talent, people should use the phrase genetic trait or physical attribute. There's nothing natural about skills and decision making. The only thing natural about it is that you are not born incompetent in some way, like through a disability. As long as you have the tools, you can develop the skill.
Ergo, these
Referring back to Blueprint Tennis, the author asks the question Why do people love to believe in natural talent? Read the article. It comes down to four points; it's romantic, starting early builds skills and expertise that are unexpected for somebody so young, acquired skills feel automatic, and also the multiplier effect (think back to Anna v Belinda, and how just by having a more favourable start, Anna became a much better player).A second article on the topic by the same author states that; there is a direct relationship between practice and performance, and top learners learnt their skills at the same rate as everyone else (they just spent more time learning, so would accumulate more knowledge).
As I keep saying, football is too complex for one of these genetic traits to make any difference over the many years that players will spend learning. If we put it in terms of a head start, it's about a foot in a 10k run. On top of that comes things like the coaches you have, parental support, the environment you play in, the opportunities that come your way, the luck (more realistically, avoidance of bad luck like injuries) and overwhelmingly, the quality and the quantity of your practice. It's not your genes.
Here's a reading list for you homies:
Outliers
Mindset
Talent Code
Gold Mines
The Bolt Supremacy
Bounce
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