Older men have geekier sons.

Ian Sample in The Guardian


Older men tend to have “geekier” sons who are more aloof, have higher IQs and a more intense focus on their interests than those born to younger fathers, researchers claim.

The finding, which emerged from a study of nearly 8,000 British twins, suggests that having an older father may benefit children and boost their performance in technical subjects at secondary school.

Researchers in the UK and the US analysed questionnaires from 7,781 British twins and scored them according to their non-verbal IQ at 12 years old, as well as parental reports on how focused and socially aloof they were. The scientists then combined these scores into an overall “geek index”.

Magdalena Janecka at King’s College London said the project came about after she and her colleagues had brainstormed what traits and skills helped people to succeed in the modern age. “If you look at who does well in life right now, it’s geeks,” she said.

Drawing on the twins’ records, the scientists found that children born to older fathers tended to score slightly higher on the geek index. For a father aged 25 or younger, the average score of the children was 39.6. That figure rose to 41 in children with fathers aged 35 to 44, and to 47 for those with fathers aged over 50.

The effect was strongest in boys, where the geek index rose by about 1.5 points for every extra five years of paternal age. The age of the children’s mothers seemed to have almost no effect on the geek index.

When the scientists looked at the children’s achievements at school they found that having a high IQ, a tendency to focus intensely and social aloofness were all linked to children taking more technical GCSEs. When children displayed all three traits, the effect was even more pronounced, the researchers write in the journal Translational Psychiatry. Overall, children who were born when their fathers were 50 or older were 32% more likely to achieve two A or A* grades at GCSE than children born to men aged under 25.

Janecka said the study is one of the first to suggest that having an older father can have benefits for a child. Previous work by Janecka and others has found that children born to older men are more at risk of medical conditions including autism and schizophrenia.

The scientists calculate that 57% of the geek index score is inherited, but that figure is likely to vary with age. If right, it suggests that DNA and the environment have roughly an equal share in how geeky someone turns out. Writing in the journal, the researchers speculate that there may be some overlap with genes that contribute to autism and a high score on their index.

If the findings are right, it is unclear why the effect is different in boys and girls. Janecka said that the study may simply have failed to capture how girls display geekiness. “Maybe we aren’t measuring geekiness properly. They may be geeky in a different way to boys,” she said. But it is also possible that whatever averts autism in girls – five times as many males are diagnosed than females – also shields them from the most geeky traits.

Research is under way to recognise why older parents are more likely to have children with particular mental disorders. One theory pinpoints mutations that build up in parents’ sperm and eggs. But with geekiness, the answer could lie in geekier men simply being more likely to delay fatherhood.

“Certain men who delay fatherhood tend to be better educated and have better jobs and a higher geek index and they pass those genetics nto their offspring,” said Janecka. “It causes them to delay fatherhood, but other factors might contribute too.”

Total Football - Barcelona style

Be it the 2-3-5, the 4-3-3, the 4-2-4, or the 4-4-2, Barcelona have consigned mathematical rigidity in football to irrelevance. They have done the same with the ancient and venerable notion that centre halves, or centre forwards, should be tall and strapping. Also torn to shreds is the article of faith that dictates all teams need a “stopper”, a specialist in defensive destruction, in midfield.

What’s more, Barcelona have signalled a democratic revolution in the sport. They have shown, through their success, that the qualities a football player requires to prosper are technical skill and intelligence on the ball. Size doesn’t matter; neither does the position of each player on the pitch.

The seed of it all was the “total football” of Ajax Amsterdam, patented by one of the sport’s philosophers, Rinus Michels. His favourite disciple, Johan Cruyff, brought it to Barcelona, first as a player and then as manager. From there the Barcelona “Dream Team” of the early Nineties emerged.

What we are witnessing today is the perfected version of that model, a purified distillation of the ideology of Michels. What the “Pep Team” delivers is more than total football; it is absolute football.

Michels led the great revolution of modern football. He bequeathed a legacy that included three consecutive European Cup triumphs for Ajax, from 1971 to 1973, and that took Holland’s “clockwork orange” team, with Johan Cruyff as standard-bearer, to the World Cup final in 1974 and 1978.

The system was based not on the manner players were distributed on the field – by a clear division between defenders, midfielders and forwards – but by a change in attitude that led the entire team to perform, and think, in a different way. The defender was no longer a mere stopper, he had to be capable of distributing the ball as adeptly as a midfielder. Possession was the indispensable prerequisite.

A player in a Michels team had to be comfortable with the ball at his feet, whatever his position. When he recovered possession, he would lift his head, find a team-mate and initiate another attack. The game was suddenly being played at an entirely different rhythm. Ajax and Holland appeared to play with more speed than any other team in history. They gave this impression because it was true.
Michels carried the orange torch to Barcelona, where he was coach for two spells in the 1970s, failing each time to make his model gel. He did, though, leave his mark, not least by his decision to sign Cruyff, even if they were unable to break the dominance of Real Madrid.

The turning point came when Cruyff took over the team’s reins in 1988. Suddenly the coach was king; his philosophy would now become the key to success. Cruyff’s first season at the helm was, however, a disaster. Had it not been for his legendary name, and if he had not believed so stubbornly in his own abilities, Barcelona would have sacked him. Cruyff convinced the president of the club, Josep Lluís Nuñez, to forget about the short term and think strategically, allowing time for the concept of total football that had captivated the world 15 years previously to permeate the club. This was the path to adhere to, this was the cause for which it was worth fighting.

In a private conversation back then, on a particular evening long on Heineken consumption, Cruyff confided to one of his drinking companions, “I am going to change the world of football.” How? “My defenders will be midfielders; I will play with two wingers and no centre forward.” Cruyff’s interlocutor wondered if that might have been the beers talking. It wasn’t.

Without a centre forward to preoccupy them rival centre halves would be left bewildered, unemployed; with two wingers the available space opened up enormously and from such a tactical platform a team whose players were all masters on the ball were free to play expansively.
Cruyff’s Barcelona never defined themselves in terms of European triumphs accumulated, like Real Madrid or Ajax, but his trophy haul was not inconsiderable: four consecutive Spanish Liga titles, a King’s Cup, a Cup-Winners’ Cup, European and Spanish Super Cups and that one, coveted first European Cup, at Wembley, courtesy of a goal from Ronald Koeman, total football made flesh. The Cruyff blueprint became emedded in the club’s DNA.

The seductiveness of the Cruyff playing style captivated the fans, the Catalan press and the youth players, none more so than the most intelligent and receptive of them all, Pep Guardiola, who rose to the first-team captaincy under Cruyff, where he remained after the Dutchman’s departure in 1996. Two Dutch coaches, Louis van Gaal and Frank Rijkaard, perpetuated the club ethos, with varying success but unwavering fidelity.

When Guardiola, Cruyff’s protégé, ascended to the first team bench, he coincided with the emergence of a group of players who had been immersed in the in-house philosophy from adolescence, among them Xavi Hernández, Víctor Valdés, Gerard Piqué, Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi.
What they had been taught, as their chief article of faith, was that the ball was sovereign; possession the primary — practically the only — priority.

The striking thng about Guardiola’s team is that, while tactical discipline is strict, one is never sure exactly what position on the pitch at least three quarters of the players are supposed to occupy.
The images showing the nominal formation of the starting 11 flash up on the television screens at the start of each match but when the whistle is blown the Barca players pop up everywhere, defying the game’s ancient orthodoxies. Dani Alves is listed as a right back but he often plays more an attacking midfielder or a winger; it has never been made clear whether Andres Iniesta is a right or left winger, or whether his natural position is in the centre of midfield. Alexis Sánchez is a centre forward — the smallest target man in the history of the sport — but disguises himself as a winger. Messi is a “false nine”, occupying a deeper position than a traditional centre-forward, and much more.

As for Cesc Fàbregas, the former Arsenal captain defies all analysis of the position on the field he is supposed to occupy. It is his superior football brain, and his years in the Barcelona youth teams, that have allowed him to impose order, under Guardiola’s watchful guidance, on the apparent chaos of his role.

Xavi Hernández is, of course, the conductor of the midfield orchestra, but he tackles back. Messi also wins back possession; if it were ever necessary he could perform perfectly ably as a full-back. Valdés, the goalkeeper, passes the ball more often than he stops shots.

Guardiola requires his players to pass the ball, even in defensive extremis, because the cardinal sin is to play a random long ball, to reduce football to an anarchic game of chance.

It is the dream that Cruyff aspired to and Guardiola finally transformed into hard, trophy-winning reality. Possession is the sacred principle, as much in defence as in attack, because if the opposition is deprived of the ball, there is no need to defend.

The team’s forward movement operates on the principle of a wave in the sea, gathering momentum until it breaks on the shore of the opposition penalty area. Even if a goal is not the outcome, even if the ball is lost, the rival team recover control so deep in their own half that they have a long and winding road ahead before they can mount an effective threat on the Barca goal. The opposition are obliged not only to cover the entire length of the field to mount a threat, along the way they have to thread a way through a team under orders to chase the ball like a pack of rabid dogs. Barca are artisans, but workers too.

What Barcelona have done is to invent a new language, or what Fábregas, since his arrival from Arsenal this season, has described as the Guardiola “software”. It is hard to assimilate for those who have not been raised from an early age at the club’s La Masia academy.

Some, such as Eric Abidal and Javier Mascherano, have managed to pick it up. But it is a measure of how tough the challenge is that two such reputed superstars as Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimovic failed to adapt, each ending up as awkward misfits, only fitfully effective, in the Nou Camp ballet.
Barca have imprinted an instantly identifiable picture on football’s global consciousness. Physicality and athleticism have bowed to refinement and technique, the warrior spirit remains but has been leavened by intelligence and the killer grace of the champion swordsman, or the matador. It does not matter if a player is tall or short, wide or thin, so long as he knows how to caress the ball.

Will Barcelona’s triumphant run last? Who knows? Guardiola may leave the club; Messi might suffer a career-diminishing injury, or simply run out of steam; a rival coach might come up with the antidote. It is possible, if highly unlikely, that Barca won’t add to the 13 out of 16 trophies they have won in the past three seasons. But whatever the future may hold, they have left an indelible mark on the game and its history. Nothing will ever be the same again.

From The Telegraph