David Brooks: Greatest Soccer Players Mentally Unusual
Soccer comes more easily, but as you improve it is harder and harder to become really good. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the greatest of all players, like Diego Maradona or Paul Gascoigne, seem a little mentally unusual. It is as if it takes a slightly off-kilter brain to be a really creative player. Baseball, at the upper reaches, does not reward minor madness; if anything it rewards the ability to not think.