Stephen satterly

The footballer looks up and around searching for information… She does so quickly but still manages to make meaning of a number of subtle cues that last a mere second…thousands of hours of training harnessed in the blink of an eye. Ball…space…team mates…opposition - and their relationship…relationships she’s seen before…moments she’s seen before…allowing her brain to generate solutions that her body can grab hold of. “Stay connected with the game…stay connected with the game…see and do, see and do” More important than ball control, or better still a keen companion to ball control, attention is a cognitive process that players should never tire of. In all team invasion sports, attention could be the strongest mediator of learning and performance. Learning happens when we pay attention to information and solidify its existence by encoding the meaning of that information… “When I see my opposite number on the front foot moving to press me I have to release the ball quickly…” Performance happens when we pay attention to the game unfolding in front of us…the cues, clues and triggers that emerge and dissolve emerge and dissolve. Attention is perhaps the strongest currency of all cognitive capabilities. And that’s what I have in mind when I listen to Ruud Gullit speak about his game. Guilt-free he shrugs his truth - “I anticipate the patterns…I’ve seen them before…from being a kid playing…I’ve seen them before…” Listening close, I’m not thinking it’s impossible to replicate Ruud. I’m think about and am curious about ‘attention’. I think of a young Ruud Gullit paying attention…making meaning…understanding…then re-applying what he knows and what he’s seen in order to anticipate with speed… “Stay connected with the game…stay connected with the game…see and do, see and do” I don’t see this as being impossible…I see this as thinking about attention!