I just read through a rather dense page of (excellent) discussion, the apotheosis of which was settling on "appears instinctive," when 'instinctive' alone offended the pedants.
This is why I love this forum.
This discussion about the differences in game intelligence as required by a player versus a manager is close to a topic I have been giving increasing thought.
I always played sports, and I'm fairly tall and reasonably athletic, so I was generally one of the better players at a younger age. Then, as self-discipline/fascist soccer moms began to play a role, my peers were increasingly more skilled than I. But, outside of the highest levels (available to a kid in rural Virginia, at least), I could just about hold my own against them, fitter and more skillful though they were.
I really do not mean to sound boastful, because we're talking about some inglorious fields of competition here, but the central point remains- I have always had a knack for knowing where to be. I threw up regular triple-doubles on a basketball team with two wins in four years. I was the Gerd Müller of my recreational soccer league, and it became a point of pride. I could tell they were 'better' than me, but I was scoring more.
*An interesting sociological aside there on the slacker heroes of my youth and their insidious influence on my value system.
As I have gotten more and more interested in the tactical side of the game (thanks almost entirely to RAWK), I have grown frustrated with myself. Why can't I see the large scale patterns that become so obvious when they are pointed out to me? If I was player x in situation y, I fancy I would've made that same run that has got everyone in here so excited, but I have no idea why I would've in relation to the role of player x in that system (also I obviously would really have been winded/vomiting on the sideline). Somewhere in the transition from 11 men to the gestalt that is a side I am missing something fundamental.
I'm not so Dunning-Kruger'd as to be surprised that after 2 years of lurking on a forum I don't have an expert level of insight, but this is happening slower than my usual learning curve- on top of my own perceived 'in-game intelligence' as a starting point. This leads me to believe that it would hardly be a skill that it was practical to train for, and potentially very difficult to scout for.
Which brings me to my question. Do you even want the cogs to be aware? From my own perspective, it seems plausible to have 11 players that all knew (seemingly instinctively!) what it was they needed to do in any given situation without having the slightest idea how it related to the whole. Is there really a benefit to them understanding the why's?
And, if not, can the system be the king when the cogs don't even know they are in thrall?
I think this is really getting to the point of the thread, and I think fundamentally that 'game intelligence' (without being very careful of what we mean by it) is of rather limited (and entirely subjective) value in assessing a player.
I can't play football to save my life. I have no pretensions to understanding the game at an individual, pitch level. But I stood on the Kop, over a period of about 15 years, watching and studying the very best Paisley-Fagan-Dalglish sides (and some less stellar Souness sides). Incidentally, the most impressive thing I ever heard Terry Venables say was that he always watched videos of a game from one end terrace, because you get a different - and better - view of shape and movement in the game, of banks of four, of players dropping into space, of the depth of the play.
Now, this doesn't make me a tactical expert, but I have found over the years I have some understanding of the shape and flow of a game, the cohesion and fluidity of a team, which seems to be lacking in many people I've met who can actually play (and also often it seems, pundits and players). Their focus is always on the individual - the battle against his opposite number, his responsibilities in any given situation, his weaknesses and his errors. But really this is natural. It's a reflection of their perspective of the game - of seeing it happen
around them, at close quarters, at high speed, at ground level. If your experience of football is primarily as participant sport, it's natural that reflecting on the game you still often see it through the eyes of a participant. Even the view from the dugout or the bench (or to a lesser extent, the main TV cameras) is seeing the game almost from within it, compared to being stood halfway up the Kop. Over the last year or so I've watched my partner's son in youth games from the touchline and the difference is very obvious. You focus on the individuals, the exertions and the minutae of touch or contact, runs and restricted views and angles.
PoP, Yorkykopite and others write very eloquently about the technique and awareness required at the top level from an understanding of this viewpoint of a game (and that's not to imply they don't of other viewpoints). An intelligent player thus understands his immediate surroundings, the options available to him, how to create time and space for himself with the right type of touch or turn. The best, most intelligent players - and I think here we come back to a player like Souness (speaking of Yorkykopite and Souness, search for 'souness' by 'yorkykopite' and see the 2nd result) - ally a technical and intelligent mastery of their immediate surroundings with a broader awareness of the tempo and the ebb and flow of a game. But I think (using managerial and punditry evidence after the event), he still saw it all essentially from an individual perspective, from the centre of the pitch with the ebb and flow of battle all around him (the notion of 'midfield general' being quite apt). His understanding of momentum and tempo I think was a self-focused one; about stamping his authority on the game, seeing his immediate opponents chasing in vain, slowing the tempo to conserve energy.
But as PoP says, Souness - who had a decent managerial record, overall - didn't have remotely the 'managerial intelligence' of those he played under at Anfield. His teams reverted to the 'English stereotype' of expecting 11 individuals to win their personal battles. He recruited players like Saunders, Ruddock, Dicks and Paul Stewart - none of whom anyone would accuse of great football intelligence. Incidentally, Paul Stewart effectively ousted from the team a very intelligent young player, who was then sent to West Ham in the deal for Dicks. Thankfully, Mike Marsh is now back at Anfield and I think is going to make a very successful coach, at least. Marsh was something like a cross between Lucas and Joe Allen; I believe in one game he basically sat dictating the game in the middle of the park and completed something like 100 of 107 passes, or thereabouts. Souness (and every media pundit) preferred Jamie Redknapp, a player I always categorised as 'nice feet, no brain' (something like Jonjo Shelvey, if he had better feet).
Anyway. Does this have a point? Yes. Initially at the discussion of Souness, he's a challenge I think to the point Prof and I were making. He was undoubtedly an 'intelligent' player, who directed games (if partly at times by sheer force of will and arrogance, as much as intelligence and awareness). He understood momentum, tempo, flow. But ultimately it seems, he really understood them from that individual vantage point
within the game. He didn't, as it transpired, particularly understand shape and tactics, or what sort of player was actually needed. He reverted to the blood and thunder of the stereotyped British manager, rather than the (apparent) intelligence and subtlety of the players he'd actually been surrounded with. That does beg the question of how much he actually understood the players around him that he'd played with for years, why they were the ones recruited and selected, what their
important attributes were. In common with some other ex-Liverpool pundits, he appears to have pictured his own teammates of the past purely as mentally tough, combative, 'winners', ignoring awareness, technical ability and - of course - the
system they had been playing within. How much of it did he really 'get'?
So the point - and coming back to the bolded bits - is that even a great, 'intelligent', player doesn't actually need to have (and very, very rarely has) 'managerial' type intelligence. He's not the manager's tactical substitute on the field. He can influence tempo and flow, because those happen around him. He can't influence shape and strategy, because he can't see them from within. But then a truly successful team needs all of it's components to be able to do that, in their sphere of the game. A single, driving, dominant force (inevitably restricted in it's own viewpoint of the action) is neither necessary or desirable, because his appreciation of the state of the game is incomplete, and his assertion of control can inhibit or be counter productive to others.
To return to an analogy posted above, borrowed from Shankly, the team needs a conductor (or three), not a composer.
