That a bit out of nowhere but I feel that in nowaday football, fans and managers seem to care more about players ability, physical or technical rather than caring about players decision making.

Being able to make a dribble 2 player in a row is amazing, but useless if you end up getting the ball out of play doing it, being able to skip the midfield with a single pass is such as a great, but if the opposition keeper get to it first because you waited too long to make the pass, you just lost possession in the end.

Obviously, having the ability to do stuff like that is great but I personally take a player who can do less but do it exactly at the right time rather than a player who can do everything at a high level but never seem to do at the right time.

Anyone share my thought? Or do you think its a manager job to develop decision making in his players? Or maybe you think footballer are athletes above all else?

I've always considered decision making to be an aspect of technical ability. E.g. if you can see the pass, you still have to have to be able to complete it.

That said, quite simply, this game is a "game of chances." You get chances by having good decision making. You convert changes by making the correct decisions. And defensively, you can prevent chances with good decision making.

The reason why it tends not to be valued as highly imo is because it is easily malleable by managers/strategy. You can "coach" decisions in a way you can't coach athleticism or flair.

I've always considered decision making to be an aspect of technical ability.

Fair enough, vision and pass quality goes hand in hand and could logically be associated to technical.

The reason why it tends not to be valued as highly imo is because it is easily malleable by managers/strategy. You can "coach" decisions in a way you can't coach athleticism or flair.

Yeah, but obviously, there is a limit to what a coach can do and also, certain coach seem better than other in this particular domain. In a case where the manager coach decisions in a single team, I would also argue that there is still an huge difference between player who already have a good decision making and those that aren't as good in that specific area.

Another thing that I stupidly didn't think about when making this thread and that I realized while reading your comment is that there different kind of good decision making. For example, a winger might make worse decision when forced to defend compared to when he attack.

Thanks for the feedback Suns, I still have must to learn about this topic (and football in general) but discussing with other users alway help me realize new stuff.

Completely agree. Decision making, off the ball movement etc... are both underrated.

Players like Muller, van de Beek, Zinchenko, Foden etc... are prime example, I dont think Muller is underrated but his smart movement earns him everything.

Pique and Maguire are too example of big overrated players with very poor decision making at times.

Pogba is another prime example of extremely good to the eyes kinda skills but contribute very less to the attacking system, his decision making can be bad depsite very skilful and it cost the team :(. He is getting better though.

Ronaldo makes a lot of useless showboating dribbles, same with Neymar (although Neymar's ones look pretty dope at time).

My 5 cents