Syed adds another fact: Spartak Moscow, a poor tennis club on the outskirts of the Russian capital, produces more top tennis players than the whole of the United States. Our inclination to think of success purely in genetic terms needs to be revised.
Matthew Syed rejects the use of words like ‘genius’, ‘prodigy’ or ‘natural talent’ when referring to Leo Messi because he believes that excellence is due principally (though not totally) to continual and deliberate practice. The author challenges the cultural belief that a genius is born and not made: with effort comes excellence and, through that, often comes success. So what needs to be applauded is hard work, not talent.
Leo has certainly always played with a ball and at all times. Remember the four games in one day with Quique Domínguez as his coach? Or those extra hours he used to put in at La Masía when the other boys had gone home? There are many more examples.
In a scientific attempt to explain just how those like Messi, Ronaldo and Maradona manage to perform the way they do, various studies have explored the possibility that perhaps they have a wider picture of the field of play than a normal footballer, and that this allows them to see more areas of the pitch, more team-mates and more rivals. But, no, there is no evidence whatsoever to back that theory.
What happens is that the best footballers collect more information in a single look. Syed says that the best chess players remember a board not as 32 individual pieces but in groups of five or six pieces. They already have in their heads between ten and a hundred times more combinations for these groups than lesser players. What’s more, the grand masters access this long-term memory in a much faster and more reliable way.
When Messi runs or receives the ball he sees patterns where everyone else sees just players or a ball, in a similar way to the film The Matrix. In the film Neo sees ones and twos in place of bullets and this allows him to dodge them. It isn’t that Leo spots anything before anyone else; it’s that he sees what others don’t. When Roger Federer plays tennis, explains Syed in his book, he doesn’t pick his best shot from a sensorial information warehouse selected at that moment, but, rather, he sees and hears the world ‘in a completely different way’, the same way, in fact, that the Eskimos are able to see more variations of white than the rest of us, because of their experiences in Arctic conditions.
‘You’d be surprised at the level of information he can gather with one 360-degree look around,’ adds Juanjo Brau. ‘He’s able to tell you where everything is, he’s a person with a visual recall that captures everything.’ So the extraordinary sportsmen develop an expert intuition, an instinctive subconscious method of solving problems. The creation of these patterns allow them to anticipate and resolve complex problems in the best way possible.
‘Leo has a perceptive intelligence, in that he knows at all times what he has to do, his natural habitat is the field of play,’ explains Juanjo Brau. ‘He is an enormously intelligent player in his profession, as all the maestros are. He is able to see what no one else can. He shoots for goal, not at the target – it’s very different. There are other players who get to the goal area, they see three pieces of wood and shoot. He sees the three pieces of wood, the goalkeeper and calculates the right time to get around him … all in tenths of seconds.’
And if he is waiting in the place he considers appropriate and does not get the ball, he gets cross. He doesn’t have time to think that the target of his anger has just come back from injury or is just a youngster. At that moment it’s just someone, normally a fellow forward or a winger, the provider of the final pass, who is at fault for not agreeing with him. Manel Estiarte, the water polo star, also saw the move and used to scream at anyone who did not do what he considered to be the right thing, the appropriate thing, the best. As Pep Guardiola has said to him on many occasions, ‘You forget that the other players are not as good as you are.’ What he probably means is that they do not see what he sees.
And how much effort is needed to reach this extraordinary capacity? Ten thousand hours of deliberate practice. Syed agrees with the assertion of Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers that a basic constituent, although not the only one, of sporting excellence is sustained training for a level of at least 10,000 hours. This represents 2.7 hours of training every day for 10 years, although it isn’t just a matter of the quantity, but also the quality of the effort made, and that requires a high level of coaching skill and observations from the coach.
Syed and Gladwell thus reclaim the theory of psychologist Anders Ericsson, who, at the beginning of the Nineties, analysed students at the East Berlin Musical Academy. He separated them into three groups from the most skilled to the least. His conclusions were definitive: the only difference was the number of hours of practice (10,000 the best, 6,000 the worst).
‘The difference between the musical experts and normal adults is a consequence of their persistence throughout their lives to deliberately strive to improve their level,’ wrote Ericsson. Another study confirmed that a group of British musicians of high standing would not necessarily learn faster than those of lower attainment, but they had spent more hours with their instruments.
Mozart, explains Syed, had 3,500 hours of practice by the time he was six, and studied music for 18 years before writing his first great work, his Piano Concerto No. 9, at the age of 21. He is remembered as a prodigy, but the quality of his musical ability came about after more than 10,000 hours of practice. Tiger Woods started to hit a golf ball when he was two years old. Serena Williams started her career when she was three; her sister Venus when she was four. Messi at the age of three was already kicking a ball that was almost bigger than him.
As Janet Starkes, Professor of Kinesiology at Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, explains in Bounce, ‘the exploitation of advanced information results in the time paradox where skilled performers seem to have all the time in the world. The recognition of family scenarios and the grouping of perceptual information into meaningful wholes and patterns speeds up processes.’ And not all of this is innate, but the consequence of deliberate practice and constant competition.
But there’s more: experience alone is not enough. What is needed is maximum concentration. ‘Every second of every minute of every hour, the objective is to expand the mind and the body as one, to push yourself above and beyond ones limits, immerse yourself so deep into your work so that by the end of your training session you literally feel like a new player,’ Syed writes.
These new theories are laying to rest various myths. On the fortieth anniversary of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, in the summer of 2013, the curators revealed the results of an eight-year investigation into the intimate life of the artist. The show (‘Van Gogh at Work’) overturns previously held ideas: the artist did not isolate himself from his colleagues. True, he wasn’t overendowed with social skills when it came to maintaining amorous relationships, but he did have regular and productive contact with other artists, particularly the Impressionists. Neither did he have an innate gift for painting. He was not an instant genius, but a tireless technician who, to learn his craft, to understand the mechanics and use of colour, copied out the 197 illustrations from a drawing manual by Charles Bargue that was considered to be a classic of its type. Not once, but three times!
For that reason we need to proceed with care: to classify a youngster as a ‘natural talent’ is to potentially overshadow the struggle and sacrifices he needs to make to develop that talent further; if he thinks he is born like this, he can begin to think that he has no need to put in any effort.
Not even the talented are aware of the gradual process that makes the better than most, so, as a result, the teaching of it in schools is impossible. Collecting and explaining all this information is difficult to grasp because it is so subtle and includes various modes of physical interaction, and a psychology so complex, that it would take an eternity just to codify it. Ten thousand hours of class, therefore, don’t necessarily lead to mastery. You can direct the interest of the students a
nd the players, you can suggest what to do and what to avoid. But little more than that.
Paradoxically, failure (or the way great sportsmen deal with it) is part of the consequence of excellence. ‘I am my number one critic. I am fanatical. I get angry if I play badly, because I never want to lose,’ Leo Messi has said. He learns from his mistakes, from an extraordinary capacity to control his own behaviour. He doesn’t just establish his targets and monitor his progress, he also objectively evaluates his aims.
What is it that drives certain people, especially great sportsmen, to pursue excellence relentlessly and tirelessly? Having scaled one peak, why do they set out to scale another with barely a moment’s pause? Where does this ambition come from? Matthew Syed thinks he has found an answer: ‘their ability to experience the feeling of anti-climax is much faster and to a much deeper extent than the rest of us. All of us have experienced anti-climax, but it is incredible the speed at which the best players come down to earth after winning a big title: almost as if they were distancing themselves from a particular goal that they may have spent years trying to achieve. Emptied out, they have to fill up as quickly as possible with achieving the next goal, and the one after, and on and on …’
Closely related to this, Leo has a tolerance to pain that makes him get up as soon as he has been kicked. This is something he has had since he was very small: be it through intuition or training, he has the capacity to deal with the pain of a kick in the shortest time possible. Even though the rival has probably done it on purpose to stop him, his only thought is of the next move.
Clearly Leo, like all number ones, has an approach to the world very different from the rest of us.
5. Commitment and sacrifice
‘I always want to demonstrate my commitment for the club. At first it was more noticeable. Now it’s something more common. This is my home, my club. I owe everything to Barcelona. I’ve always said it, I’m happy here.’
(Leo Messi in El País, 2012)
‘He has played many times with his ankle fucked. I know this because many times Juanjo Brau says that it’s impossible, and then Leo goes and plays.’
(Gerard Piqué)
The strength of feeling that a footballer has for his club goes a long way to determine his performance. Playing just for the money will be manifestly different from playing with real commitment to a club, particularly one, as in Leo’s case, with a protective president and a sympathetic coach. ‘This commitment and enthusiasm that Leo demonstrates to the game and to the club that gave him the chance to grow is the energy that supports him and gives him the strength to carry on, to push himself to the limit, to battle against adversity,’ says Pedro Gómez. Leo feels a great debt to Charly Rexach and to the president, Joan Laporta, who understood his needs, made efforts to help him and kept their promises through different phases of his blaugrana journey.
The ex-president of Barcelona improved Leo’s contract on a regular basis and was the first to make him the best paid player in the club. And at a moment of crisis, the president turned the club around (and not only with the first team) so that Leo could triumph and become the leader. Barcelona ‘will always do whatever is necessary to ensure that Messi is happy at the club, and we know that Messi has a total commitment to Barca,’ said Laporta in 2009. This explains why, in his first years with the first team, he would kiss the badge when he scored: he did it with particular enthusiasm after scoring a hat-trick against Real Madrid in 2007. He wanted the world to identify him with the club whose shirt he was wearing.
His commitment is for the institution, but also, given his history, to those who are close to him: he never forgets where he is from.
‘From a very early age I wanted to be a professional, and I dreamt of playing in the first division. Yes, I had to make many sacrifices. The first was to leave Argentina when I was just thirteen years old and start again from zero, make new friends in a city where I knew no one.’
(Leo talking to Audemars Piguet)
The commitment he made stemmed from a basic need to move his dream forward, so that the boy who wanted to be a footballer was not left in the gutter, disillusioned and unfulfilled. Nor was he prepared to allow the same fate to befall his family and those who depended upon him. The sacrifices he made were nothing less than the price he had to pay to reach his destination.
6. Humility
‘My first objective is to appear on the list of players pre-selected to compete in the World Cup.’
(Leo Messi upon arriving in Argentina preparing for the World Cup in South Africa, 2010)
‘No, I don’t believe that this has been my best year. I am more interested in prizes on a team level, rather than personal awards for breaking records or individual performances. There have been years when we won many more things and were better.’
(Leo Messi after winning his fourth Ballon d’Or)
‘I love Messi, not only for the pleasure of seeing him when he plays, but also because, despite being the best player in the world, it’s almost as though he hasn’t realised it. Messi doesn’t seem to believe he’s Messi!’
(Eduardo Galeano, writer)
‘If he has already overcome the phase of believing he is Maradona, then he won’t have a problem overcoming the phase of believing he is Messi. And then he can become a footballer the likes of which we have never seen, one so great that he won’t even need a name.’
(Martín Caparros, Argentinian writer)
The first awakening of humility is the acknowledgement of one’s strengths and weaknesses, a recognition of one’s limitations. This is Leo. Listen to his friend Oscar Ustari explain how his companions view him.
‘Something that comes as a surprise, above and beyond his footballing skills, is how he presents himself. He is very natural, very unpretentious. And this in professional football where a player’s ego is usually all-pervasive. But this doesn’t happen with Leo. Today he can have whatever he wants, just by raising his hand: often a footballer measures his success by his possessions. He is not like that at all. So many times we have gone to restaurants in Barcelona or here in Buenos Aires, and he is always the same, unassuming Leo. He surprises me still, even when I see him frequently. We have all had friends who have become famous or important, and have suddenly behaved differently. But Leo remains Leo. And that is truly admirable.
‘The Argentina federation wanted to give him some kind of recognition for having played a hundred times for his country, but he said no. In a friendly maybe he would accept it, but not in an official match with the national side. He doesn’t like that, he doesn’t need it, he doesn’t like exposing himself to things like that.
‘The other day I disturbed him – I don’t like to bother him at all – because the club in my town, where I first started, was celebrating its centenary and I wanted him to send them a message, because today all the little kids want to be like Messi. I asked him if he could do me a favour and send a greeting. He was in Bolivia, the day before a game. And he said to me, “okay, what do you want me to say?” and I said, “I don’t know, anything! Send a greeting, they’re a hundred years old!” He sat on a bench, it looked like a recording studio, he crossed his legs and began, “well I’m Leo Messi …” and he sent it straightaway. Incredible, not everyone does that.’
‘He would never say “thanks to me …”’ Juanjo Brau explains. ‘Leo never asked me for anything but he offered me everything. He’s a person who always wants to give, he prefers it. Then it’s up to you if you take or not. He is a man of few words, but of great feelings. I get choked up speaking about him like this but I would like people to know him as he really is, people don’t know what he is like.’
As Jorge Valdano says, ‘He seems like a normal bloke. But he’s an alien on the pitch. Or to put it another way, Leo Messi is a genie in the shape of a normal person.’
The writer Eduardo Sacheri believes that if you look at Messi from an emotional viewpoint you cannot detect the various strands that enrich his play: ‘You’re no
t going to notice how he scores, or what obstacles he has to overcome. For example, what does he do after he scores a goal? And this is one of the things that I like most about Messi. He always looks for the team-mate who gave him the ball. He isn’t the type of person who runs around on his own, taking himself into the corner, making sure he’s getting the best camera shot while he beats his breast and runs towards the full-back. He runs ten metres and then turns so his colleagues can catch up with him, and then looks for the one who gave him the ball. And when he assists for somebody else’s goal, he celebrates that, too. This kid understands about football. Notice that he has the humility, despite being the best, to know that football is a game played by eleven people, not just one. The man’s got an ethic and an aesthetic for playing football. And an ethic is not the same as passion. An ethic is an intellectual construction. He has that understanding in his head and his heart.’
SKILLS NECESSARY TO ‘DEMONSTRATE WHAT’S BEEN LEARNED’
7. Self-confidence and leadership
‘I’ve always been the smallest. I don’t give orders on the pitch. If I have something to say I do it with the ball. I’m not a great talker.’
(Leo Messi)
‘Messi influenced me, what he does is staggering. I copy his moves.’
(Neymar)
‘Leo has learned that he should control the game and not that the game should control him. The rest of us are controlled by the game, and we make decisions according to how the game is going. I don’t often take the decision I want to or the correct one, but take the one that I can take at that particular moment. Sometimes I’m wrong. Leo has got to the point that it is he who decides when he takes the ball, when not to, when to dribble past three players, and when not to, when to make the goal-scoring pass or when to score himself … He controls everything, it’s what makes the difference, and he decides when to be part of the play and when not to be.’
Messi Page 43