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Thought I'd share my experiences playing soccer for the first time. Maybe some fans can weigh in on this and confirm/deny some of what my friend said in the following story. And if you're not a fan, might motivate you to watch/play a match yourself.
Sports have never really interested me. Try as I might they always seemed repetitive. I have a friend, we'll call him John, who has been playing soccer casually for 11 years now. He often sends me highlights of Ronaldo or Messi's best plays and I sort of just nod at what I assume is impressive athleticism but never really appreciated on a deeper level. Last week I was traveling and ended up in John's city, where he agreed to let me spend a few nights. But he insisted that I join him for a casual soccer game. He plays in a rec league at his university (not varsity) and we weren't even playing with the rec league team, just a bunch of grad students who play casually. The circumstances were less than ideal. I was running on about 7 hours of sleep total the last two nights combined and was kept awake mostly by nicotine. But the weather was nice and John was adamant so I agreed to a match.
I was predictably terrible. Slow runner, uncoordinated, had a hard time keeping track of the action. To make matters worse the players for whatever reason didn't bother to wear any identifying jerseys or headbands so I had to figure out as I went along who was on what team. Overall, I pretty much achieved blocking the player with the ball a few times and forced them to make an inconvenient pass. Not particularly fun but a decent workout at least.
Later at John's apartment, he asked me some questions about the experience and we talked in person for the first time about the game and why he enjoyed it so much. As we talked, I began to understand the appeal myself, even as an unathletic STEM guy. John basically made it seem like, at the highest level, soccer is more of a mind game than a test of speed and strength. Before, I naively thought the game worked like this: "You dribble as fast as possible. You keep track of the few people closest to you and look to pass it to the teammate closest to the other team's goal who is available. Rinse repeat until you win the game." In a sense this isn't wrong, but I massively underestimated just how much information processing the best players do during a game. John estimated that as one of the better players in his rec league, that he could keep track of 4-5 objects on the field with a very high level of accuracy. Say, the ball and 4 of the players' bodies. He guessed that the best player in his rec league could track 6-7 objects at the same level, and the best pros could easily handle over 20. Idk how accurate this is. But to prove his point he analyzed a play by Sergio Busquets (I'll edit this post with the video once I find it) where he, based on a very brief <1s glimpse of a teammate in his peripheral vision, running at an angle to him, knew exactly where to pass the ball such that it would reach said teammate from a distance. And it was by far the best pass possible in the situation, far from any of the other team members. In another video, he receives a pass from a teammate despite 3 defenders standing between him and the ball. This seems impossible. How did he know where to stand? The answer: he was watching where the defenders were looking the entire time enough to know they hadn't seen him. I had no idea that level of spatial awareness, that fast and over such a large distance, was even possible.
Some more videos he showed me featured Ronaldo scoring goals in the dark and Ronaldo pulling off knuckleballs, basically a technique where you kick the ball with such little spin that it takes on a very erratic trajectory, but when does correctly might lead a goalkeeper to anticipate where it would land had it had a normal spin.
Overall, much more interesting things going on that I had previously given the game credit for. And something I could see myself watching in the future. Also worth noting that for the first hour of my own match, I felt like I was going to vomit or faint. But after that, I got a second wind of energy, and felt very relaxed, even had a mild runner's high. John explained it as my body burning fat instead of the glucose in my bloodstream, have no idea if this is bro science or not.
That is an interesting write-up because as someone who played casual football my entire life I have never thought of it in these terms. It has always been more of a casual brawl over a ball with limited rules of aggression. But then I always play as the dirty defense who either stops the ball or stops the player so maybe that is just my perception.
Think most of the players in my friend's casual soccer circle would feel similarly. The players on his rec team might have better gamesense.
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In fencing, there's second intention which is basically a fancy term for feinting such that you get your opponent into the right distance/position for your next attack to hit.
I heard from a fairly respectable teacher that it can go as high as fourth or fifth intention, which is just totally beyond the perception of anyone who isn't international-level. I believe they do these things without conscious thought, it's reflex and trained intuition.
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What if I told you practically almost every skill/artform is like this? At the high levels, it's not only mechanics but also a mind game especially if it's adversarial like a team-based sport. There are very very few things in the world where you are not better off with more juice flowing through your brain. And almost everyone is so mechanically gifted at the tail ends that winning/losing almost entirely boils down to strategy.
This is why I find people who harp about their hobby having so much richness and depth and complexity to be done right, so annoying. It's like stfu man, everything other than stamping envelopes is like this. I'm all ears to discuss the particular ways in which your hobby is uniquely complex in ways that is not obvious, but the fact it is complex and multidimensional in and of itself is not very interesting.
I naively assumed that the skill ceiling was lower in the mental game of soccer and the pros were distinguished by varying degrees of athleticism. But actually no, even among the best players there's a huge variation in levels of spatial awareness.
Game sense, it's usually called, and yes, once a base threshold of athleticism is achieved it's the biggest factor for success in most sports. With some exceptions, as american football and baseball do have players whose job is mostly maxing unidimensional athleticism, but not all of them. Game sense is still the top skill of an american football quarterback.
To an untrained eye, watching sports you see a very chaotic situation and don't understand why some players are so revered, they just seem to be lucky to find themselves in a position to score a goal and other players in that position would have had similar success rates. But then over time, you figure out how most of sports is about putting yourself in that favorable position.
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What do you have against my hobby? Getting the stamp to match the paper grain is not something you learn on your first night of stampin.
I'm kidding, but yeah there is a huge amount of depth to a lot of things. I play in a rec league sport and my current skill level is frustrating because my strategic mind is easily outpacing my ability to execute. Not because I have a brilliant strategic mind, but because I'm badly out of shape so execution is harder.
I don't know if it was Kasparov, or if it's even true. When he was asked, "When should I learn openings?" his response was "After you've already become a grand master".
But I agree with the spirit of the probably fake anecdote above. Even if not in such an extreme form.
I think most hobbies are experienced best when there is an early "grind" period where you just put in work to build a solid fundamental/mechanical baseline far above the minimum required to start strategizing. This way when you start getting perceived as good (combination of mechanics and strategy), you can really take off.
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The particular ways that they're pointing out for soccer to be complex were in fact non-obvious to me, and I thought the writeup was interesting.
My second paragraph isn't directed at OP
fair point.
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Reminds me of this analysis, as well as the linked articles from the 2014 world cup which include the quote “only Messi has figured out how to win matches by moving less than everyone else.”
It's true of most sports though, the best players can predict the play before it happens. In tennis for example, the pros start moving for the balls trajectory before it is hit. I guess based on the opponents body and arm motion. Us unfortunate mortals are the ones who tend to play reactivity.
Soccer does seem to be the sport with the most to keep track of though. Idk how basketball compares.
American Football, and ice hockey seem equally if not more complex. The players are more tightly packed together in American football, and there is more of a meta of "everyone rush towards the ball". And hockey plays physics and velocities a lot more.
Basketball is probably comparable. I think the three-d space is a bit more used in basketball, but there are fewer players. And the ability to use your hands adds variables to positioning.
There are also plenty of recreational type sports that seem more complex to me. Airsoft or paintball can easily get fiendishly complex. Knowing your teammates, enemies, and all of their firing trajectories, as well as possibly ammo or gun jam situations. If soccer is Chess, then paintball is Chinese checkers. You'll need an extra decade or two of moors law to beat humans at it.
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