The discovery of slowness: Time to deconstruct Gretzky’s and Messi’s predictive brains

Abstract

Jafari and Smith hypothesized that time during games may pass slower for the world's best football player, Lionel Messi, from Argentina. This hypothesis leads to two questions: How can we explain such temporal paradox and how could this explain his dominant performances? Remarkably, the Argentinian's case was preceded by the equally astonishing case of Wayne Gretzky: The Canadian considered ice hockey as a rather slow game and was the best player in the sport's history. Whether Messi's and Gretzky's motor neurons fire faster, (inter)act differently or whether other mechanisms are at (inter)play warrants targeted research. A further explanation for such dominance of football and ice hockey, respectively, could be that both athletes "buy time": To this end, automized motor skills may allow their predictive brains to make better use of time than other players to read the games and plan ahead. Deconstructing predictive minds of outperforming individuals like Gretzky and Messi could provide unique options to elucidate how differential time perception may make performances in athletes, and beyond, more swift and more efficient.

Screening Youth Soccer Players by Means of Cognitive Function and Agility Testing

“…Soccer performance is a complex phenomenon that relies on technical, tactical, physical, mental and psychological factors. Among other factors, playing capacity relates to sprint skills combined with sudden and explosive changes of direction, goal-shooting skills and the ability to “read the game” (Erren et al., 2016). Therefore, soccer skill sets entail not only motor skills, but they also include cognitive control, comprised of core and higher level cognitive functions such as inhibitory control and decision-making (Chang et al., 2017).…”