Be Diego Maradona. Seriously – check out the photo, courtesy of Mr Finch. Just look at it.
Go back and look at it some more – that’s six men marking one, and who knows – how many markers are coming in from outside the picture? Look at the lumpenfeet of the opposition, see the balance and poise of Maradona, who has all the time in the world to do whatever he needs to…
The reason the competition is stymied though, is not because of Maradona’s skills, but because of the fear of them. It was the fear of what he could do, rather than what he was doing, that made playing him so hard.
The Maradona picture got me thinking about Kathy Sierra’s post the other day – about how we can all become expert at something, even something we think we’re not cut out for. Perhaps Kathy, but natural talent can’t be ignored. Believe in nurture, sure, but you can’t rule out nature. Pushing a rock up hill is great exercise and will make you stronger, but pushing a snowball downhill can also be very rewarding. It is balancing the two approaches that makes us well rounded.
Sometimes a player is touched by the hand of God.
Patrick’s blog is a good Friday blog, twining (thats twining, not twinning) subjects as disparate as the GPL, Premier League Football, poor punctuation in national newspapers that call for better punctuation, and um… sports bras.
Dennis Howlett says:
March 10, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Here here James. Personally I thought Kathy’s ideas were fine but the analogies were completely wrong to the point of doing a dis-service. And I blogged it!
james governor says:
March 10, 2006 at 2:50 pm
i saw that dennis. sorry if i forgot to include a link.
Patrick says:
March 10, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Kind words indeed! Thank you. And those of us that still follow Maradona’s career remain a little afraid of what he might do next…