Is it relevant whether a footballer is intelligent or not?

Djourou’s comments about the fragility of players’ mentality and the humanisation of seemingly untouchable stars not only rang true in the aftermath of Gary Speed’s death but also provided a welcome change to the normal “we’ll give it 110%” chat that we are forced to swallow down week after week as though we couldn’t conduct both sides of the interviews ourselves. Footballers might not need to be intelligent to play footballer, but fans do need to read about and listen to intelligent footballers if we are not to be dumbed down like so we are by so many other forms of common culture.

Nobody’s calling for intellectual snobbery, some footballers can’t help being less intelligent, but the desire for footballers who can be respected on every level is definitely something worth seeing. Obviously footballers are never going to be bought and sold based on their IQ but the football as a sport has a problem with its reputation. Those who know and love football appreciate that it is a complex cultural phenomenon uniting communities, spreading wealth to the disadvantaged and providing pleasure for millions of people around the world. For those who don’t understand football it is the sport of idiots: full of overpaid cretins writhing around on the floor as a consequence of non existent fouls, squandering their money, setting a bad example to the youth and consistently embroiling themselves in scandals of all shapes and sizes. So, does intelligence in football matter? Yes it matters. It matters to football’s reputation, it matters to those who love it and want to understand it better and it matters if we want to get the best out of all the positive aspects of football. It’s not just footballers that are the problem either. Owners and managers need to be more responsible, the press perhaps needs to be less invasive and in light of Gary Speed’s sad death the requisite level of manners from chanting fans should perhaps be set higher than it already is. Football has the power to enrich our lives, and more people would realise it if we as a community all recognise that standards set for every other area of life apply in football too.

The article was written by Hamish Mackay for FootballFancast.com. Make sure to check out the latest news, blogs and podcasts at FFC – ed.

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