Progress starts with intuition

Intuition is an ability that every human being basically possesses. Individual talent is about relying on it at the crucial moments, especially when you have a lot of traffic in your face and very little time to make decisions.

Of course, we’re referring to football here. ‘Traffic’ is the term used by British sports journalists when they see a lot of opponents around a player on the pitch and little room for play to develop. What now? Come up with a creative solution to make space, or retreat and hold on to the ball? Or even lose possession? The game doesn’t stop so you can think about it. Even in the regional leagues, there’s hardly time for extensive reflection and weighing up decisions during the game. In the Bundesliga everything runs at full tilt, and when you are playing against the world’s top teams – well, forget it! Extreme speed puts everyone under noticeable pressure when making decisions. And you can only really avoid this pressure by transforming it into a creative idea through intuitive decisions made in milliseconds. At least that is the public perception that intuition creates in the event of success. “It all looked so effortless again” – exactly, because the right decisions were made intuitively.

Intuition has a lot to do with the fact that your professional expertise has been fully developed. Admittedly, that is sometimes hard – think tactical drills in the cold and wet – but achievable. It’s about training your own sensibility by being confronted with as many different game situations as possible and sensing the big, reproduceable patterns in them that work for you – patterns that separate correct from incorrect again and again and therefore distinguish the intuitively correct decision from “losing touch with reality”.

Both in the youth academies and the associations, work is being done to give players a complete picture of their game and all eventualities, including the necessary self-confidence to listen to their gut instinct and be guided by intuition. Time and again, these ‘forges’ produce players who intuitively do something special – regardless of their position on the pitch, in defence or attack. But, of course, training can’t do everything, it can’t enable players to experience every conceivable game situation. This is where talent comes in and turns players into stars. Leon Goretzka takes possession superbly from the midfield because he not only has a concept of the course of the game, but because he intuitively backs the right outcome. Davies draws level with opposing players on the flank because he senses his opponent will lose the ball and has intuitively positioned himself correctly for the breakaway. Hernandez suddenly has a ball at his feet again because he was already obstructing the opposing striker when the latter didn’t even know how the next tackle would occur.

When these intuition-driven individual decisions come together, something emerges in team sport that sticks in the minds of fans. A team that excels individually and dominates collectively. Intuitive, correct decisions, an edge over the competition, collective success and always electrifying moments of genius. Everything seems so simple. You couldn’t have imagined anything better. And there was no need to, because you have already done it right intuitively.

With two new electric, compact-class premium SUVs, the Audi Q4 e-tron and the Audi Q4 e-tron Sportback, the Audi team now has two fully electric vehicles on the market which, besides an exceptional range and an impressive amount of interior space, excel with new standards of usability. Intuitively simple. Intuitively right.