It wasn’t the only time someone had come to talk to Gueye about Diawandou’s soccer talent. The head of the boy’s private school once appeared at the house, and Gueye thought he was going to praise Diawandou’s performance as a student. Instead, the headmaster pleaded for Gueye to let Diawandou play on the school’s soccer team. “I asked him, ‘Is Diawandou in school to study or play football?’ ” said Gueye. But he eventually agreed, and school officials still speak wistfully about how many trophies Diawandou helped them win. The young player also impressed his fellow students by juggling lemons picked off a tree in the school’s courtyard. Diawandou’s passion was clear. Not even breaking his leg twice as a kid diminished his love for the sport. Thus, Gueye ended up agreeing to Ndiaye’s request for the boy to attend his academy, although he continued to hound him about his education.
Diawandou was excited to begin his training at CNEPS, but it didn’t start so well. The first time he showed up at the green metal gates that mark the academy’s entrance, Ndiaye sent him home. “His hair was too long,” said the coach. The kids were supposed to have buzz cuts, but Diawandou arrived sporting dreadlocks. “He said I needed to cut my hair, so I went home and came back the next day,” said Diawandou. It wasn’t the last time Ndiaye sent him home without playing. Diawandou had to run for 15 minutes to make it from school to the academy every afternoon and sometimes showed up late. Many of the other kids had already dropped out of school, so they didn’t have the same challenge of turning up on time. But Ndiaye was a stickler for the rules. Whenever Diawandou showed up late, he sent him packing.
Otherwise, Diawandou excelled at the academy. He normally played in center midfield and was especially good at passing and free kicks. His idol was the famed attacking midfielder Zinedine Zidane, and he had a poster of the Frenchman on his bedroom wall at home. But it was Diawandou’s leadership on the field that impressed Ndiaye most. He began shouting instructions at the other young kids on his team as soon as he arrived at the academy, and the coach quickly appointed him captain. “He always talks with the players,” said Ndiaye. “He’s the second coach of the team.” Diawandou is much less vocal off the field and exudes a quiet intensity. He speaks when necessary but often refrains from participating in the constant banter among his teammates. But they look to him for guidance when the chips are down and know they can count on his judgment and determination.
Diawandou hoped to impress the Football Dreams scouts with these same qualities, if he could just make it to the tryout on time. He certainly knew the way. The tryout was being held at his academy, so the route from school was burned into his brain. He took a hard right as he ran out of the gates and quickly picked up speed along the paved street outside. He eventually hung a left onto a dirt road, passing a small convenience store selling cold drinks and a basketball court where kids dressed in school uniforms often played after class. He willed his legs to go faster, even though he knew the chance of being selected for Football Dreams was tiny.
Ndiaye was the one who told him Qatar was sending scouts to pick the three best field players from Senegal for the final tryout at Aspire in Doha. Diawandou was dubious and said, “Three players in all of Senegal? No, I cannot do this.” But Ndiaye insisted, “No, just come try, nobody knows what’s going to happen.” Neither of them had ever heard of Qatar before. Diawandou was familiar with Saudi Arabia since Mecca was the center of Islam and he was Muslim. Qatar was a mystery, though.
Diawandou finally agreed to attend the tryout and now didn’t want to miss his chance. As he headed into the final stretch of his sprint, he ran past a small butcher shop and a long white wall that radiated purple when the bougainvillea was in bloom. Finally he could see the academy in the distance. He burst through the green gates and sped past the school’s crumbling concrete stand. He could see the tryout was still being held on the academy’s dirt field, but it was almost over. There was only one match left.
The team Diawandou was originally supposed to join had already played its game, so he had to scramble to get in front of Colomer, who was running the tryout. Luckily, there was a single spot open for the last match, but it was in central defense, not his normal position in midfield. Not ideal, but Diawandou had no choice and took up his place in the defensive line. As it turned out, it didn’t take long for him to impress Colomer enough to be invited to the next set of tryouts, in Dakar, and Diawandou thinks he knows why.
Diawandou was fast and had impressive technique. In fact, he scored from a free kick soon after taking the field. He was also a natural leader. But those weren’t the things Diawandou thought put him over the top when he was unexpectedly thrown into the team’s defense. In his mind, the critical edge came from years of playing matches in the dirt streets outside his home. “Sometimes when we played with friends, we put money on the game,” he said. “And if I was winning, I would go defend because I didn’t want them to score and lose my money.”
Players battling for the ball at a Football Dreams tryout in Thiès.
Back then, the only reward seemed to be pocket change for ice cream. Little did Diawandou realize these pickup games were helping him develop arguably the most vital skill in soccer, something that truly separates the greatest players in the world from the rest, not just in defense, but everywhere on the field. Not coincidentally, it also happened to be the most important thing Colomer was looking for as he scouted hundreds of thousands of kids across Africa.
The magic ingredient wasn’t size or strength. Those things couldn’t tell you very much about a young player’s potential. It wasn’t speed either, although it could be a big asset. Technical ability was vital, but even it played second fiddle to the trait Colomer truly wanted to see: game intelligence. After all, being the fastest dribbler on the pitch or the best passer isn’t going to do a player much good if he doesn’t know what to do with the ball or where to position himself to be effective.
“A talent, if there is a way to describe it, is the player who understands the game, who understands instantly what the game is asking,” said Colomer. “Many players know how to dribble. They know how to shoot. But you realize that when the game is asking for dribbling, they pass. When the game is asking for a pass, they shoot.” Other players do exactly what the game requires. “These are the talented players,” said Colomer.
He likes to give the example of Andrés Iniesta, Spain’s World Cup winner and Barcelona’s sprightly midfield genius. “Iniesta is not quick, is not good in one-on-one, is not excellent at shooting, and is not strong physically. But he is doing exactly what the game is asking,” said Colomer. Iniesta makes better decisions on the field than he can manage watching the star’s games from the comfort of his couch, he said.
It’s not just soccer. Colomer’s observations about game intelligence apply to every sport where fast-paced, complex decision making is involved. Think of Tom Brady picking out a receiver as 300-pound linemen sprint toward him, or LeBron James playing a no-look pass to a teammate as he dribbles full speed toward the hoop. The ability to evaluate a dynamic situation and execute the right decision almost instantly is the hallmark of sporting genius.
Colomer intuitively knew to look for game intelligence after years of scouting for talent, but scientists learned of its importance in soccer in a different way. They assessed the game intelligence of players by freezing match footage at different moments and asking players to predict what would happen next or what decision a player on the field should make. Elite players were faster and more accurate in their ability to scan the field, pick up cues from an opponent’s position, and recognize, recall, and predict patterns of play.
One of the first studies in the early 1980s examined attempts by goalkeepers to predict the direction of penalty kicks. This study, which employed simple static images of penalty takers and recorded observations using pen and paper, found that skilled goalkeepers had a more structured visual search process, restricting their gaze to the right side of the body and shooting leg, in the case of a righ
t-footed penalty taker. Subsequent studies using match footage and more advanced technology like portable eye trackers have examined players in a wide range of game scenarios, such as one-on-one, three-on-three, set plays, and so on.
A study in 2011 recorded the eye movements of players when interacting with life-sized video sequences of 11-on-11 situations filmed from the perspective of a central defender. It found that skilled players had better anticipation because they spent more time focused on the opposing team players and areas of space, as opposed to the player in possession and the ball. Similar studies found that skilled players were better at recognizing familiar patterns of play, such as a two-on-one situation or a triangle or diamond shape forming between players, and using this information to predict the best course of action (for example, where a player should pass the ball).
One of the best stories illustrating the power of game intelligence involves another little Argentine who became a giant of the game, Diego Maradona. It was told by Jorge Valdano, who was on the field when Maradona scored his famous goal in the 1986 World Cup by dribbling through half the English team. As Maradona sprinted from the halfway line to goal, Valdano kept pace alongside him in the center forward position, expecting a pass but never receiving one. After the game, Maradona came to see Valdano in the locker room and apologized for not giving him the ball. Maradona said he had originally planned to pass, but as he neared goal, he remembered a similar situation against the English keeper seven years earlier. He failed to score then, and as he weaved through the English team at the World Cup, he realized where he made his mistake. Maradona concluded he didn’t need Valdano and could score by himself. Amazingly, he was able to call up this memory, process it, and execute the right decision in just seconds, while dribbling at full speed in one of the highest-pressure environments in soccer. The story, published by the soccer magazine The Blizzard, prompted a former Ajax team manager to note that “the seconds of the greats last longer than those of normal people.”
Stars like Maradona build up the database of memories needed to drive this game intelligence, as well as the technical skill to put it to work, by playing soccer for thousands of hours. But not all play is equal. Scientists have discovered that one type of training in particular is most useful in developing game intelligence and preparing young players to become professionals. Maradona and Messi both did it. So did Diawandou, Bernard, and the other players Colomer plucked off fields across Africa.
Researchers have found that the key ingredient is not how much formal practice or how many official games players had as kids, but how much pickup soccer they played in informal settings like the street or schoolyard. One study published in 2012 looked at two different groups of elite players from English Premier League academies who were about 18 years old. One group scored higher than the other for game intelligence based on a series of tests using match footage. They found that the two groups accumulated about the same number of hours of formal practice and official competition during the previous six years. But the players with better game intelligence engaged in almost one and a half times as much pickup soccer than the other group. A similar study published the same year found that over 20 percent of the difference in game intelligence was accounted for by the amount of pickup soccer kids played between the ages of 6 and 12. Researchers believe this type of training helps build game intelligence and hone technique because it creates the opportunity for players to experiment with different skills and tactics in an unstructured environment, leading to better anticipation and decision making.
Another group of researchers published a study in 2009 comparing players at a Premier League academy who received full-time professional contracts at the age of 16 with those who didn’t and were let go. They also found that the two groups had accumulated about the same numbers of hours of formal practice and competition between the ages of 6 and 12. But the players who were given contracts engaged in more than twice as much pickup soccer as those who were let go. A similar study in 2012 looked at the playing histories of elite Under-16 academy players in several countries, including Brazil, England, France, Ghana, Mexico, Portugal, and Sweden. Brazilian players accumulated the most number of hours of pickup soccer, four to five per week, which helps explain why they’ve been so successful on the world stage. Kids also logged plenty of hours playing pickup soccer in Ghana, where Colomer found Bernard, the player who reminded him of Messi. Pickup soccer is often the most popular in poor countries where kids have little else to do and see the sport as their only ticket to a better life. As the venerated Dutch striker Johan Cruyff once said, “Every disadvantage has its advantage.”
Scouts certainly understand the importance of assessing game intelligence when judging a young player’s quality and potential, but it’s much harder to measure in an objective way than factors like height, speed, and even technique. One way is to simply watch a player’s head when he’s on the field. A study of Premier League midfielders found that the ones who scanned their surroundings the most completed almost twice as many forward passes as the least visually active. But this is a pretty inexact measure.
It may not simply be where players look either, but how much they can physically see. A group of researchers in Germany and the United States recently developed a computer test to determine a person’s “attention window,” the maximum visual area consciously perceived with one glance. It’s tested by measuring the area in which people can quickly and accurately perceive two objects on the edge of their peripheral vision. This is vital in soccer because a striker, for example, has to keep an eye on opposing defenders, the goalkeeper, his teammates, and the ball simultaneously.
Researchers found that athletes have a 25 percent larger attention window than nonathletes. They also discovered that athletes who play team sports like soccer that demand a greater horizontal distribution of attention perform better in this respect than those who play sports like volleyball that require more vertical attention. The club Red Bull Salzburg has started measuring the attention windows of its youth players and has found a clear correlation with their performance on the field. “The first results are really great,” said the club’s academy director, Ernst Tanner. “If they have a broader attention window, they are usually the better players.”
Other researchers have used brain games in the lab to see if they could determine which players have greater game intelligence. One recent study conducted by a group of Scandinavian scientists tested the “executive function” of players from the top three divisions in Sweden or, to put it more simply, their skills in problem solving, planning, multitasking, cognitive flexibility, and the ability to deal with novelty. During one test, for example, players had to draw a series of nonrepeating geometric patterns on paper to test their “design fluency,” a well-known evaluation of creativity under pressure. The researchers found that both senior-elite and semi-elite players had significantly better measures of executive function than the general population. Also, executive function was able to predict which players would do better in terms of goals and assists over the following two years.
The researchers also tested two of the world’s most intelligent players, Barcelona stars Xavi and Iniesta. Iniesta was in the top 0.1 percent for design fluency and also scored incredibly well in what neuroscientists call “inhibition,” the ability to alter one’s learned behavioral responses in a way that makes it easier to complete a particular task. Xavi also had very high scores in tasks involving scanning ability, analysis, and imagination.
These kinds of tests are promising, but they are far removed from the real world of soccer. Even the process that researchers have used to gauge game intelligence by showing match footage to players and asking them about their perceptions and decision making is imperfect because it doesn’t measure performance in real game settings. Even if better tests were available, scouts would still need to evaluate game intelligence alongside a player’s physical and technical qualities. That’s what makes soccer scouting so difficult. Th
ere are so many variables to consider and no specific mix that’s guaranteed to produce a star. Think of talent identification in terms of a series of dials a scout uses to evaluate a potential athlete. In a sport like rowing, a scout may be primarily concerned with just a few dials, like height, wingspan, and VO2 max (which helps measure aerobic fitness potential). They’re easy to measure, and the minimum settings needed to produce a star are clearer than in soccer.
In contrast, soccer scouts must focus on a whole host of dials, which could vary depending on position. They include speed, agility, endurance, dribbling, passing, shooting, crossing, heading, tackling, and of course game intelligence, just to name a few. Only a few of these are easy to measure in a comprehensive fashion, and the minimum settings needed to produce a star are much less clear. That means scouts are grappling with a multitude of combinations that could produce success or failure. They’re also trying to assess individual performance in a team setting, no easy task. Plus, they’re dealing with children, who present moving targets since their bodies and minds are in a state of flux. It’s extremely challenging to identify which kids have a greater capacity to learn and improve over time, which will ultimately determine who ends up on top.
The preceding list of variables doesn’t even include what might be the most important factor in determining a young player’s potential: personality. It’s also one of the toughest things for a scout to gauge, especially at the initial stages of evaluating a potential talent. “In 25 minutes, you cannot know the personality of anybody,” said Colomer. “We don’t fail too much with their football level, but we fail sometimes with their personality.” A kid might have blistering speed as well as impressive technique and game intelligence for his age, but does he possess the discipline and motivation necessary to succeed? That doesn’t just include the drive to train day after day and the emotional control necessary to handle match pressure and deal well with coaches and teammates. It also involves the ability to cope with potential distractions off the field like family problems or pesky agents.
The Away Game Page 5
