Deconstructing Football Greatness: Spatial Intelligence
There is such a huge difference between someone like Busquets/DeJong and Casemiro in terms of an intuition for space. Busquets uses this in a first touch that always takes the ball towards space and away from players. DeJong in uses it to accelerate into space with the ball. Isolating this particular quality, I had to nurse the pesky grudging acknowledgement that perhaps the logical extrapolation of this skill leads me not at Messi or Maradona but Neymar. Unlike Messi’s center of gravity and god-like ball control, I’ve never been able to quite identify what made Neymar untouchable. If anything, he makes dribbling look much easier than even Messi does, seemingly gliding effortlessly past defenders. The convenient placeholder has always been ‘pace’, but that’s patently not true. I consider now that it’s micro-acceleration that gains him not space but time.
The Gaze Heuristic allows us to intuitively make the complex differential equation calculations needed to catch a ball. We observe the initial angle of the ball and then run towards it keeping this angle the same, this is why we don’t run directly to where the ball ends up in a straight line or as fast as possible, instead modifying both our line of approach as well as pace continually. Great catchers, archers, and the Israeli Iron Dome all have a mental model of the position of the object not as it currently is but as it is going to be by the time the decision is executed. Does Neymar use space not as it is but as it is going to be by the time he plays the ball? Is that why he always seems to run through empty space with defenders scrambling on either side without ever having actually ‘dribbling’ through or past any of them?
Is this an underrated and undertrained skill? Decision making is often alluded to during the game, the ability to make accurate and quick decisions is based on intelligence, energy, and mental application. But some people are just more intelligent than others, and not all of that is conceptual. Spatial intelligence is an intuitive quality, and I wonder how much a dribbler can be trained to accelerate into space if his brain doesn’t process variables so quickly?
This applies to defense as well of course, and goalkeeping specifically caught my eye with regards to the gaze heuristic. Courtois is majestic. His height, reflexes, and again, decision making, all get paraded as the reason he’s one of the best ever, but it’s quite easy to identify just how good his Gaze Heuristic is. On many occasions, Courtois moved in the perfect trajectory to close the angle, of all the different points of space he could have ended up. He’s doing it instinctively, that’s what separates him from someone who doesn’t make the save, who didn’t move fast enough, or to the right place, and only later maybe reflexes and actual goalkeeping ability last of all.
It would be interesting to notice spatial intelligence in defenders, i.e changing the spatial relationship between you and the dribbler/ball in small increments such that intercepting the ball becomes a formality? Intelligent defenders ‘cut out the angles’ but I’m trying to access something different here, a different axis of spatial perception, that isn’t a sensing radar like interception is (stand on the locus of all points that can be drawn from one attacker to the next, and is more like a cheat code version of the Iron Dome which continually adjusts trajectory to intercept a moving target that is continually adjusting trajectory to find space.
That leaves me at the next uncomfortable proposition then. If a Neymaresque level of expertise requires a superior gene for spatial intelligence and intuitive physics, the ecological rationality that gave us the gaze heuristic, then some genetic dispositions will make for much better players ceteris paribus. It is a stereotype that European players are disciplined, well-drilled, and efficient while Latin players are talented, mercurial, and full of flair. I’ve never needed to look past the cultural impact of early-age organized training, group dynamics vs individual brilliance, and social mores on efficiency and profligacy. Now I’m looking past it. The gaze heuristic is one of many that evolved heavily through predation. We’ve mostly been prey. Some of us developed stronger defenses because only those of us who did could survive harsher predatory environments. Ceteris Paribus, are the biggest gains to be made from identifying these gaze heuristic champs and give them the top quality training?
Leaving genetics aside, is there a link between personality and the feel for space? I can’t help thinking I had a far more intuitive love for space on the football field when I was younger. Playing on large fields was freeing in a way it hasn’t been in a long time. The pressure of receiving a ball under challenge was greatly reduced, because there was just so much space to turn into or accelerate through, that no amount of pressure was too much. Controlling for a perceived reduction in relative pace/skill/status, unless these have causative power, I am nursing a hunch that my feel for space has declined with age, both attacking as well as defending.
Before we close the chapter on evolutionary psychology though, is defending a totally unnatural mental exercise for us? Have we ever been predators? We’ve been hunters yes, but does that come close to the experience a cat has when it stalks and then intercepts a mouse? I have a newfound admiration for defenders now.
