Progressão
Progressão is a book, a podcast, and a long-term thinking project focused on football, learning, and skilful human behaviour. Our work approaches football from a complex, holistic, and ecological perspective, where players and all football actors are understood as living beings always in correspondence with their environment.
Progressão
#187 Game intelligence
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Welcome to the Progressão podcast.
This week, we open a discussion around one of the most used, and perhaps least clearly understood, concepts in football: game intelligence.
What do we actually mean when we say that a player has great game intelligence? Is it the ability to see passes others do not see? To position intelligently? To make the right decision at the right time?
In football, terms such as game intelligence, game understanding, and decision making are used constantly, yet there is still no clear consensus on what they truly mean. In this episode, we explore both the traditional and the more contemporary ways of understanding the concept.
We discuss older cognitive definitions that frame game intelligence as a separate mental component involving perception, anticipation, and decision-making, and contrast these with ecological perspectives that view skill as something emerging in the ongoing relationship between player and environment.
From players like Jari Litmanen to deeper philosophical questions about perception and action, this episode asks what skill actually is in the game. Is game intelligence something inside the brain? Or is it better understood as skilful attunement to the game itself?
A foundational episode in our ongoing series on football as a complex and ecological phenomenon.
🌍 More at progressao.fi
🐦 Follow us on X and Instagram: @progressaofi
Ruka on Podcast Jörnä. Jale straville ja Just Pekkasina. Toivottevat kaikista Rukkäle. Haluamme mitöstä fotka. We kujamme yjänä kaikäjän, kompleksita relaksja meillä on hyvä ja tämän näytjän kiluja fotkoalla. Welkom epäsaw podcast.
SPEAKER_02This week katsaamme gaum intelligens ja käcision making. There on gain intelligens, game understanding, decision making jaks koncepts in football, ja no konsensus on what thää meet. So we toot this would be great moment to open discussion in. Let's first go into different definitions of game intelligence in science and in coach talk. So for example, the concept of game intelligence includes a set of skills that determine how strong or weak a player's understanding of the game is. These skills include perceptual cognitive abilities, decision making, tactical decision making and anticipation. So decision making and tactical decision making are now separated in this definition. And it continues. Game intelligence can be understood as a player's ability to solve the fundamental situations of the game both with and without the ball in the most purposeful way for the benefit of themselves jail. To saada game related kognitive skills such as anticipation, perception and tactical decision making. Additionally, when we go to definition, we can see that there is kinda kognitive component added to game intelligent. So, game intelligence has also been defined as the ability to use one understanding of the rules, strategys, tactics ja oneself in order to solve the problems created by the game or by the opponent. In here the idea has been that game intelligence is the cognitive component of the player's skills. So it's not a motor action mutta a kognitive component. And in this sense, game intelligence acts as a bridge between understanding the game and executing movement.
SPEAKER_00Tana talk about non-active versus active decision making. So, some old frameworks distinguish between non-active and active decision making. Non-active decision making refers to contexts such as unopposed technical or tactical practice where the player is not required to continuously adapt to an opponent or change in game information. Active decision making in contrast tekee place in more representativistä environment, for example small games or skill practice with opposition, where players must perceive information, adapt and make decisions in real time. This also links to the old distinction between teknikan and tail skills, where teknik skills were often seen as motor eller movement komponenta ja taktical skills as the kognitive komponent. So in muliin traditional frameworks Tässä tread as separate domains: tekniikä kuin eksekucion and taktiks as thinking. This reflects to the old idea, että tekniik belongs to movement, while taktiks belong to kognition. a separation that modern ekologskä ja gebajada perspektivistä increasingly challenge.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. So when we talk about FIFA ja their education and how they educated coachissä. So Arsen Wenger, who is leading person in this role on FIFA has talked about the house model for players' skills. And he said that your body does what your brain wants. So in the house, the lower level is the technical level that should be ready when the player is 12, then it's the physical level, and that should be ready when player is 12 to 16. Then comes the tactical level. And in that tactical level is tactical awareness, gain awareness, tactical knowledge, game sense, tactical skills, game understanding, decision making and such concepts. And the final part of the house is the roof, which is the psychological part of players' skills. And there you can see the division between technikal and taktik or motor and game understanding skills. But jeepet, think about some players, some skillful players, and how maybe game understanding could reveal in their game. Some players who are good in game understanding.
SPEAKER_00So for muista people, he would probably be a prime example of outstanding game intelligence.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. When we think about Littmanen, we can think of kind of insightful and skillful movements, very skillful passes, and such actions in the game. And here we come into the kind of interesting idea. Game intelligence is often connected to certain kinds of actions. Like for example Littmanen: insightful pass, clever positioning of the ball, or seeing something others do not see. And these are the kinds of actions people often associate with game intelligence.
SPEAKER_00But what about some other football actions? For example, what about dribbling? If Kevin De Brun receives the ball in the midfield, carries it into the space for 30 meters and then plays a simple pass to a teammate. Why do we often create the pass as game intelligence but not the carry? Perhaps the most intelligent part of the actor was the moment with the ball.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. This is interesting. So we have some action that are kind of game-intelligent action and then others are not so. What about defending? How often do we describe a tackle, recovery run or excellent defensive positioning as game intelligence? Like Philip Laam, he was good in tackling, sliding. Was he game intelligent in those situations?
SPEAKER_00In my honest opinion, yes. But instead those are usually described with words like aggression, toughness, physicality, intensity. So gain intelligence is often linked with something more, let's say, intellectual. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02intellectual. People can say he has eyes in the back of his head, that he sees everything and he can take the ball and make nice passes and such things. So it's higher cognition, it's something different than for example animals or babies or even kids have. It's something next level. Game intelligence is often connected to cognition. Higher cognition: the assumption is often that to have game intelligence you need to be highly intelligent in the brain-centered sense. It's in the brain. You need to process the game, understand it, make decisions and then produce the correct action. But then an important question emerges. Can a four-year-old child have game intelligence?
SPEAKER_00Imagine a 2 or 3 year old playing with a ball. Very quickly the child learns to move into spessa to become available for a pass o triple or run with the ball in the space. So this is already, we can call it a football action. So do we say this child has game intelligence or do we say something else is happening?
SPEAKER_02Jack, exactly. Täter to have a little problems with this game intelligence traditional definition. Because with the traditional idea, maybe this child running with the ball to the space doesn't have game intelligence. He doesn't understand the game yet so well, but he understands actually this action, running into space well. Perhaps the issue is that we often separate intelligence from action. Many traditional definitions describe game intelligence as the cognitive component that includes, like we said earlier, perception, decision making, anticipation, tactical processing and such concepts. And very important: these are often separated from the action itself and they are actually separate things that you can separately train also with different brain training programs. So it's a wider philosophical view.
SPEAKER_00The idea is that we do we do not perceive the world directly. So instead the brain receives information, processes it, builds internal representations and then sends the action.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. So the body does what the brain wants, like Wenger said. And this is also reflected in many coaching models because this is how we teach, this is how FIFA with Arsene Wenger is speaking about player development housing where technique comes first, then physical development, later tactical awareness. And there we have the question: if game intelligence is purely higher cognition, how do children become highly skilled chess players at such young ages? Because chess Jpe, jos football, meillä kids can be very good at chess ja it's kind of kognitive gäme.
SPEAKER_00kognitiv sport ja kognitivus sport only. So it ovat how intelligent you are. Mutta i just recentli näitä 11 jaar oldänname top female chess playä in Britain. Kan du imagina? In football, we talk about oke, first me ja bolissä. And then just later you startup understand, as we spoke already hyja kognitiva things like gain intelligence or reading the game and so on.
SPEAKER_02There is something wrong in this idea. Something is missing. This leads us to a deeper philosophical question. Do we actually perceive the game indirectly? And do we use mental representations or do we engage direktly with the environment? This is another traditional kognitive models often assume indirekt perception, like you said Jipe. The brain as processor, almost like a computer. The player receives sporti, processes it, predicts probability and sensi. And from all this given, dear listener, two statements in this episode, and two other statements we will leave to näks episode.
SPEAKER_00HE. Statement number one. Game intelligence is seen as a kognitive component that consists of perception, anticipation and different forms of decision making, including tactical decision making. From this perspective, it can be studied as a distinct component of performance. Statement number two.
SPEAKER_02The cognitive basis of game intelligence is understood through indirect perception, mental representations in the brain, and the processing of incomplete or impoverished information by the brain as a kind of computer. This clearly reflects the traditional information processing view of human cognition. However, there are other views, and next week we continue and return more deeply to nature, perception, and what game intelligence might be from an ecological point of view.