Are Footballers “Thick”, Really?

This is the first in a two-part series exploring the intelligence of footballers – a subject often affected by stereotypes. While post-match interviews and viral moments may reinforce a perception that players lack intellect, new research suggests otherwise. This article delves into a ground-breaking study which reveals the advanced cognitive skills, strategic thinking and mental agility required to excel at the highest level of football, and indeed a read-across to any sphere of life. So, are elite players more intelligent than they’re typically given credit for? Let’s find out.

Eh? Dunno…

The stereotype persists: footballers are physically gifted but intellectually limited. From Cole Palmer’s post-match one-liner “dunno”s to Jack Grealish struggling to find the country he plays for, England, on a map, public perception often equates footballing talent with a lack of intelligence. However, there have always been exceptions: Gary Neville’s razor-sharp analysis on Sky Sports and successful business career, Brazilian legend Sócrates, who trained as a doctor while captaining a selecao, and Clarke Carlisle’s success on Countdown.

Are these individuals outliers, or is there more to footballing intelligence than meets the eye?

A pioneering new study has now sought to answer that question – as Associate Professor Leonardo Bonetti, who led the research, puts it: “Countless individuals dream of becoming soccer players, though only a select few manage to achieve this goal. We wanted to find out what makes elite soccer players so special and what drives their success”.

Bonetti’s team examined the cognitive and psychological profiles of what he calls “special” players to explore if footballing intelligence can extend beyond the pitch. The supposition being that while many footballers leave formal education early to chase the dream of success, often without any formal qualifications, their intelligence is honed through rapid problem-solving, spatial awareness, and strategic thinking under pressure. If that’s true, perhaps it’s time to rethink our assumptions about the beautiful game’s brightest minds and update our understanding of what it takes to succeed at the highest level.

The Science of Success: Measuring Footballing Intelligence

This ground-breaking study is the first to combine cognitive and personality assessments with real-world football performance data. Conducted by an international team of researchers from leading universities, including Oxford, Aarhus, Bologna, Queensland, Rio de Janeiro, and Stockholm, the study examined 204 elite players from Brazil and Sweden.

Researchers assessed the players’ cognitive abilities through neuropsychological and personality tests, linking the results directly to footballing success. Bonetti emphasises: “In recent years, cognitive abilities have emerged as a critical factor. Our study not only confirms this but also significantly expands on previous findings by combining comprehensive psychological assessments with cutting-edge machine-learning techniques.”

The Study: Cognitive and Personality Insights in Elite Football

The study involved cognitive assessments:

• Design Fluency Tests: Neuropsychological assessments measuring cognitive flexibility, creativity, and executive function, linked to frontal lobe activity. These tests evaluate divergent thinking, problem-solving and adaptability – traits crucial for elite footballers.
• Personality Assessments: Based on the Big Five Personality Traits (OCEAN model), one of the most widely accepted frameworks for understanding human psychology used in ‘evidence-based’ psychological research, workplace appraisals, personal development, marketing and behavioural analysis, which assesses:

Artificial Football Intelligence

Historically, research on athlete cognition has been limited, often focusing on small samples or non-elite players. Artificial intelligence played a pivotal role in this latest, large-scale study to analyse cognitive and personality traits, offering a more comprehensive and accurate perspective. AI was used to distinguish elite players from non-players with 97% accuracy, confirming that their mental attributes are just as exceptional as their physical ones.

By analysing vast datasets, researchers could identify unique psychological patterns and assess how cognitive skills and personality traits correlate with success. The AI models distinguished elite players from non-players with 97% accuracy, based on factors like:

• Decision-making speed
• Working memory
• Adaptability

The study highlighted the critical role of psychological factors such as mental resilience, quick thinking, planning and teamwork in an elite player’s success. The key findings revealed that elite footballers demonstrate:

• Exceptional planning skills
• Enhanced memory capacity
• Superior executive function (cognitive flexibility and decision-making under pressure)

As Bonetti explains:

“Being an elite player is about more than just physical fitness or technical skills; it’s also about having a keen and adaptable mind. Traits such as quick thinking, the ability to plan, and collaboration in a team all play a big part in success.”

Interestingly, players also scored highly in personality traits associated with success, such as discipline, extroversion, and curiosity, while showing lower levels of neuroticism. Their reduced agreeableness aligns with the need for single-minded determination in competitive environments in the quest to succeed.

These findings suggest that mental agility is just as important as physical ability when it comes to elite performance on the pitch.

Using AI in this way to analyse huge amounts of data to look at mental and behavioural patterns not only reshapes how we view intelligence in football but also opens the door for new ways of identifying and developing talent in football. It also has a relevance to other sports and business.

Shock Results: Rethinking Footballers’ Intelligence

The general media response to this research has been that the results are ‘surprising’ because they challenge conventional views of intelligence. Footballers have long been stereotyped as lacking intelligence, a perception that extends well beyond the UK. Bonetti notes in the study that in Italy footballers are often considered unintelligent, and the view in the UK is perhaps encapsulated in a quote from Bobby Robson, the England manager, who described the prodigiously talented footballer Paul Gascoigne as ‘daft as a brush’.

The research found that football intelligence is not just based on instinct, but a highly developed skill set. Players process vast amounts of information, make rapid decisions, and strategically adapt to high-pressure situations. Most strikingly, while the study did not measure IQ directly, footballers’ cognitive flexibility scores placed them in the top 1-2% globally. Their performance on cognitive tests suggested an equivalent IQ range of 120 to 130, placing them well above the general population.

As Professor Predrag Petrovic of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm concludes:

“These are super-clever individuals in terms of how their brain works. Maybe some of them are not as schooled, but you absolutely cannot dismiss their brains”.

This research reshapes how we view intelligence in football. In the second article in this series, we’ll consider how it not only redefines perceptions of players, but also offers new methods for talent identification and development, potentially influencing not just football, but other fields as well.

By Neil Wolstenholme, Chairman of Kloodle