Is Practice Enough To Make A Player Great?

While there are adherents to the 10,000­ hours rule, to be a true elite player you need the right genetics, too.

- Samindra Kunti

The best footballers in the world have always expressed themselves freely, drifting and darting graciously across the field with an indelible grace. Their shimmies, dribbles, touches and entire game seem to come naturally to them. Inadvertently, they embody the nature argument: to be a true elite player you need the right genetics.

These genetic factors are wide­ranging – from natural physical ability (hand­eye/ foot­eye coordination, visual acuity, among others) to innate mental attributes such as focus, determination and motivation. So, in a way, Ronaldo, Messi and Neymar were simply born to win.

Unlike these three, most people can barely contemplate playing in a World Cup. A professional career, let alone World Cup participation, is but a fantasy for the majority of humanity. Or is it?

Deliberate practice 

The 10,000­hour rule – popularised by Malcolm Gladwell’s 2009 novel Outliers – posits that this number of training hours over a period of 10 years will allow a talent to attain a professional level. It’s the ‘magic number of greatness’. The tenet is that skill, predicated on innate talent, is simply the manifestation of thousands of hours of ‘deliberate practice’ – practice in which the athlete cognitively engages. The rule – and its controversies – has to a degree taken hold in football.

The rule is based on a study by K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University and a researcher into the psychological nature of expertise and human performance. Ericsson designed a methodology to examine how many hours musicians practise to improve their skills and performances, applying this primarily to pianists and violinists, in the early 1990s.