Millions will watch the World Cup this summer. Almost none of them will see what actually makes those players elite.
I remember Euro 2004 like it was yesterday. England leading France, minutes to go, the whole country thinking we’d finally done it. Then Zidane. Free kick from 25 yards, curled into the top corner like he had all the time in the world.
And if that wasn’t enough, penalty in added time to win it.
What nobody tells you is that Zidane was physically sick on the pitch before he stepped up to take it. Physically sick. And you’d never have known. He placed the ball, ran up, and buried it. That moment has stayed with me for over twenty years.
That era had something. Ronaldinho conjuring goals from nowhere. The Brazilian Ronaldo bulldozing through three or four defenders, holding them all off with that low centre of gravity and those scissor skills, before squeezing a shot past the keeper. Figo. Zidane gliding through games like the pressure didn’t exist.
These were players people paid money to watch. Players who could make something out of nothing.
The modern game is different. More structured, more functional. Everyone has a role, everyone presses, everyone knows their job. That’s not a criticism, the game has evolved. But somewhere along the way, something got lost. And I’d argue it’s getting lost earlier and earlier, in the grassroots sessions where the next generation are supposed to be developing.
Here’s what I mean.
The decision is already made
Watch the best players heading into this World Cup, Musiala, Alvarez, the players who define big tournaments, and if you look carefully, you’ll notice something. The decision isn’t being made when the ball arrives at their feet. It’s being made before.
In the half-second before contact, while the ball is still in the air, they’ve already read the picture. They already know. The touch, the pass, the move, that’s just the execution of a decision that happened earlier than most people can see.
Most youth coaching completely ignores this. Sessions are built around what players do with the ball. The technique, the finish, the drill. Rarely around what happens in that half-second before it.
That’s where elite football actually lives, in the read, the scan, the decision made early.
I see it every week with the players I work with. But one player stands out when I think about what decision speed actually looks like when it’s being developed in real time.
He came to me at under-16 level, stepping up from Sunday League into JPL football. Raw talent, good enough to make that jump, but not yet comfortable with the ball under pressure. In the early part of that season he was giving possession away too cheaply. Not through lack of effort or ability, but because the decisions were coming too late. He was reacting to situations rather than reading them before they arrived, and at JPL level that margin for error is much smaller. The mistakes were affecting his confidence and you could see it.
What we worked on in training wasn’t technique. It was recreating the exact pressure situations he was facing in matches and giving him the repetitions to start making better decisions within them. Not telling him what to do, letting him figure it out. Letting him feel the discomfort of getting it wrong in a safe environment until the right read started to become instinct.
It took a few months. But in the second half of that season the leap in his game was significant. He became one of the most influential players in the team, eventually the most important one. He was made captain. He was regularly winning Man of the Match. And at the end of the year he won Player of the Year. The same player who had been doubting himself badly just months earlier.
Nothing about his ability changed. His decision speed did.
It’s a habit, and like any habit it has to be trained deliberately. It doesn’t develop by accident, and it certainly doesn’t develop in a session built around cones and repetition with no real game pressure attached to it.
Composure isn’t a personality trait
The other thing that era showed us, and that the best players at this World Cup will show us again, is composure. Real composure. Not the absence of pressure, but the ability to make good decisions right in the middle of it.
Zidane being sick on the pitch and then scoring that penalty isn’t just a great story. It’s a coaching lesson.
Brazilian Ronaldo holding off four defenders, still composed enough to find the shot, still composed enough to make the right decision with bodies all around him. That quality looks like a personality trait. It looks like something you either have or you don’t.
It isn’t. It’s an environment product.
Players develop composure when they’re allowed to make decisions under pressure without someone removing that pressure for them. When they’re trusted to problem-solve. When mistakes are part of the process rather than something to be avoided at all costs.
Think about how many young players get the ball in a tight situation and panic, not because they lack ability, but because every time something has gone wrong in training, an adult has jumped in with an answer. They’ve never had to sit with the discomfort of figuring it out themselves.
So when the moment comes in a real game, the composure isn’t there because it was never built.
Coach it out of them, through constant instruction, through shouting from the touchline, through sessions that never replicate real game pressure, and you won’t see it when the moment matters most.
The modern game still has these qualities in the players who define tournaments. It just looks different now. More controlled, less flamboyant. But the foundation is exactly what Zidane had, what Ronaldo had, what Ronaldinho had. Decision speed. Composure. The ability to read the game and act on what they see.
Your child doesn’t need to be Zidane. But even the player who does the less glamorous work, who wins the ball back, finds the right pass, holds their position, needs these qualities to do that well.
They aren’t gifts. They’re developed.
The question worth asking is whether the environment your child is currently in is actually building them.
If you want your child in an environment designed around exactly this, the GI Assessment is where it starts. Find out if your child qualifies by getting in touch at this link here.