Slashdot Mirror
Soccer Superstar Plays With Very Low Brain Activity
jones_supa (887896) writes "Brazilian superstar Neymar's (Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior) brain activity while dancing past opponents is less than 10 per cent the level of amateur players, suggesting he plays as if on "auto-pilot", according to Japanese neurologists Eiichi Naito and Satoshi Hirose. The findings were published in the Swiss journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience following a series of motor skills tests carried out on the 22-year-old Neymar and several other athletes in Barcelona in February this year. Three Spanish second-division footballers and two top-level swimmers were also subjected to the same tests. Researcher Naito told Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper: "Reduced brain activity means less burden which allows [the player] to perform many complex movements at once. We believe this gives him the ability to execute his various shimmies." In the research paper Naito concluded that the test results "provide valuable evidence that the football brain of Neymar recruits very limited neural resources in the motor-cortical foot regions during foot movements"."
Soccer is literally one of the dumbest sports around.
The field is huge, so there aren't really any space constraints.
The objective is as simple as could be: kick a ball around.
The ball is large.
The nets are large, especially compared to the size of the human trying to guard them.
The pace is rather slow, even during bursts of "activity".
Any sort of physical contact above a slight nudge will get a player penalized.
It's like every single aspect of the game has been crafted to be slow, dumb and easy. I have no fucking idea how a single match can attract 100,000 third-worlders to attend in person, who will sit there for 90+ minutes to watch a boring, uninspiring "sport".