There are many T&T footballers with an ABUNDANCE of football IQ, but they don't end up playing pro football, or not even for the country. Frankly, for the most part, the T&T footballers with the highest football IQ end up going to college to study medicine, engineering, law etc after their stint in the SSFL. I saw this numerous times with the PRES Sando teams of the 1980s, among other SSFL teams out there.
This does not happen in TT alone. I am almost sure this happens world wide.
I am shocked to read this comment as it suggests that national footballers lack higher IQ's than those footballers that depart for medicine, law or engineering. Their are two fundamental problems with this statement: 1. It lacks any quantitative evidence that academic IQ translates to football IQ and 2. It presumes that IQ test are measure of intelligence.
The latter, ignores that most educators today ignore IQ test as a measure of intelligence as it has consistently not proven to be a reliable predictive measure for success. One of the key reasons is that IQ test tend to favor people who find the easy answer, IQ test ignore rational and irrational thinking required in real world decision making. This might explain why as a country we can't fix our problems but that's another matter.
The former, lacks quantitative evidence that national athletes lack IQ, on the contrary I can find a high percentage of highly educated national athletes relative to the general population. In addition, because you have academic ability doesn't mean you have football IQ. Are you suggesting because you book smart your football smart? Where is the evidence? Sadly, looking at the administration of sports in TnT the opposite might be true.??
I had the pleasure of speaking with a world class footballer who had NOT gone to college, but spoke French, Italian and Spanish though he came from a small village in english speaking West Africa. He had multiple businesses on multiple continents that he managed. I asked him how he did this with out a formal education. He said the mental and emotional intelligence to run at top speed, avoid 3 or five human beings, then pass a ball 40 yards to your team mate feet calculating distance, time, space, wind in a split second conditioned his mind for decision making under pressure. He said we all have 2 legs, we all train, we all have technique; its the mind that separates us. He felt it was an advantage to him because most people under estimate his intelligence so he enters negotiations with an advantage of knowing how is opposition is thinking about him.