Footballers vs chess players: the intelligence IQ tests miss

Footballers vs chess players: the intelligence IQ tests miss

A striker receives the ball with his back to goal. In less than a second he assesses the position of three defenders, the goalkeeper off his line and the movement of two teammates. He chooses the pass, not the shot. The move ends in a goal. That instant reading of space and time is the same kind of positional intelligence a chess grandmaster displays when calculating variations. Yet while the chess player is assumed to be intelligent, the footballer is dismissed as "a millionaire for kicking a ball around". Why the double standard?

Football as a cognitive gym

Advocates of footballing intelligence point out that the talent for reading the game, anticipating movements and deciding under pressure is not qualitatively different from the ability to solve abstract problems. Messi is often cited — considered clumsy at learning languages but a genius on the pitch — as proof that intelligence is multiple and contextual. Professional success in elite sport also requires a mental discipline many armchair intellectuals lack: hours of training, coping with failure and teamwork.

The yardstick: salaries versus prestige

The economic paradox is obvious: elite footballers earn in one year what a university professor earns in a lifetime. That breeds resentment disguised as intellectual contempt. They are called "millionaires for kicking a ball around" without acknowledging that the market pays for a scarce, trained and demonstrable talent. As some analyses remind us, the link between intelligence and professional success applies just as much to other professions popularly looked down upon, such as acting.

The puzzling fact

Examples of cunning on the pitch are countless: Maradona, Guti, Messi… And off it, many have shown a head for business. Yet the stereotype persists. Perhaps because measuring intelligence with IQ tests ignores the fact that there are forms of intelligence that are not solved with equations and require no perfect diction. Next time a footballer decides in a fraction of a second where to move the ball, remember that Kasparov took minutes to move a piece.