A natural

There’s a player in our Sunday soccer game who’s generally at a level above everyone else. The kind you’d watch for five minutes and call a natural. The ball sticks to his feet. His movement is slick and easy. And he always seems to have so much time on the ball, like the game runs a little slower for him than it does for the rest of us. I asked him recently whether he’d ever thought about going pro. Turns out he came up through the fourth division in Argentina, playing all the way to the under-21s. When he was in college, he’d train from early morning to early afternoon, then head to class. In effect, he’d put in thousands of hours of practice over most of us at the game. It’s the reminder that never gets old for me. What looks like natural talent almost never is. There’s usually some talent in the mix. But the thing you’re actually watching, the ease, the time on the ball, is a culmination of thousands of hours of practice that came before it.