If you only watch compilations of highlights, anyone can look world-class.
I remember the first time I watched that video on Youtube. This kid, maybe a few years older than I, dancing with a ball, dribbling everyone like Ronaldinho. Through the pixelated images, he captured me completely with his insane movements and tricks I’ve never seen before. At that time, I was still playing at a pretty good regional level. I thought I was the best, at least in my local club. But as usual with the internet, it opens the window to the world, and I was looking at someone, somewhere, doing something absolutely amazing. Something out of my world. At that moment, I thought for sure this one is going to be the next big thing.
A decade later, I stopped playing football and embraced a whole new life. But I kept being a supporter and remained a sports nerd. Internet was now as common as electricity, and Youtube was filled with amazing pieces of content of wonderkids. But what about that guy?
It turns out he never became a pro. Apparently, he had a few years in football academy but dropped out very quickly. I couldn’t find a lot of information about him, but a sort of interview, on one of these obscure football fanzines in the dark corner of the web. One particular segment caught my attention. He talked about that video on Youtube. He explained that he tried hundreds of times that combination in training, and he was glad that his friend caught the “best moments” on camera. And that video shared online made him a local celebrity almost overnight and put unbearable pressure on his shoulders.
A few months ago, I had that conversation with a young football fan. We discussed the best strikers in the EPL, and I was shocked he didn’t recognise people like Shearer or Sheringham as some of the most incredible players ever touched the grass. Through our argument, I started to see how a whole new generation watches sports: through clips, through highlights. A football match isn’t 90 minutes and stoppage time of a continuous battle anymore. It is a few seconds of TikTok, a few frames on Instagram, or a few sequences on Youtube. Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are compilations of goals. A sort of football pornography where hundreds and hundreds of goals flash one after another within a few minutes. Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Neymar, Zlatan, but also Ben Arfa, Quaresma, and even some Sunday football league players dominate this new information age. In the time of multitasking, there is no place for team and no patience for build-up. It is now a group of 11 individuals trying to get a shot on camera, trying to feature in the next close-up that some folks will share on Twitter and hopefully bring a few thousand likes before flipping to the next one. The outcome becomes the reality, stripped of its context.
The danger is the trivialisation of extraordinary and the contemn of hard work. How often I read people venting their frustrations online about not understanding why they don’t improve. Every day, thousands, if not more, CSGO or Valorant players complain on Reddit that they can’t rank up despite being phenomenal. They post their top ACE or a screenshot of their most spectacular performance as proof that the system is rigged and that they deserve much better. But what they forget to mention is all the other shots they missed, all the calls they didn’t make, all the positions they didn’t take, all the push they didn’t respect, and all the small insignificant details they didn’t care about. They focus on that one anecdote and dismiss all the data.
Last night, I crossed the 500H mark on AimLab. It’s been a year since I started using this program. With some exceptions, I’ve played it every single night. I hit 110K+ and got my best score ever in gridshot. But what is more important is that I hit close to 110K every single time in all the following sessions. I probably had one or two 80K+ in my first few months of AimLab, but I was closer to the low 60K on average. It took me probably a quarter or more to get 80K on average. What defines my level isn’t that top dot that appeared suddenly when every planet was aligned. My level is that line constituted by thousands, tens of thousands of dots of tries and retries. My level is defined by my highs as much as my lows. It took me 500H to gain 50K points on average, to reduce my reaction time by 130ms on average, and to bring my accuracy from 90% to 98% on average. And now, I own that skill, I belong to that level, and I stay there. It is my new baseline, it is my normal, and it is good.
In episode 165 of Thorin’s Reflections, Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund, one of the best Counter-Strike players ever, said that he wasn’t talented, but he always put in the efforts to be better. He talked about how other players would just pick up something and become very good very quickly and that he had to do much more to catch up. But when so many tried to become professional and abandoned after barely a year, he tried for more than 5 years. He was mocked for trying too hard. He was mocked for doing nothing but focusing his energy and time on improving his skills. In the end, hard work never made him more talented but made him consistent. It made GeT_RiGhT arguably one of the first CSGO’s clutch king: he doesn’t hit the impossible shots from time to time; he just always hit the right ones.
