Academy coaches love talking about football IQ. The player who sees the pass before anyone else does. Who knows when to drop deep and when to stay high. Who makes the right decision, quickly, under pressure.
Maths professors talk about problem solving in much the same way. Spotting the pattern. Choosing an approach. Noticing when an answer doesn't look right.
I think they're describing the same thing. And in both cases it rests on something much less glamorous: basics practised so often that you no longer have to think about them. That's why maths needs practice more than almost any other subject.
You can't look for the pass if you're looking at the ball
Watch a young player whose first touch isn't there yet. The ball arrives and all his attention goes on controlling it. By the time it's under his foot, the space has closed and the pass has gone.
It isn't that he can't read the game. He just hasn't got any attention left to read it with.
The players with the best football IQ have usually stopped thinking about their touch altogether. It's automatic. That's what lets them get their head up.
Maths works in exactly the same way
A child working through a problem with a few steps, say a fractions question or working out an area, needs their attention on the problem. If they have to stop and count up in sevens on their fingers to get 7 × 8, that's the first touch going under the foot. By the time they've got the answer, they've lost track of what they were trying to do.
Psychologists have a name for the space this happens in: working memory. It's the part of your mind that holds whatever you're thinking about right now, and it can only juggle a handful of things at once. If one of those is busy working out 7 × 8, there's less room for the problem itself. Once the fact is automatic, it stops taking up space.
That's why the basics matter so much. Times tables, number bonds, place value. Not because they're the point of maths, but because knowing them without thinking is what frees a child to think about everything else.
It sounds obvious, but it's easy to miss. We sometimes treat recall as the boring bit and problem solving as the real maths. In practice, one depends on the other. The higher-level thinking only becomes possible once the foundations are solid.
Why maths needs practice more than most subjects
Every subject builds on what came before, but maths does it more relentlessly than almost any other.
A gap in what you know about the Tudors doesn't stop you understanding the Victorians. A gap in multiplication shows up in division, then in fractions, then percentages, then algebra. Each layer sits on the one underneath.
Football is the same. You can't coach a team to play out from the back if they can't pass the ball five yards.
It's one reason schools in England put so much weight on times tables. Children in Year 4 take the multiplication tables check (MTC), which is all about quick, confident recall. We looked at which times tables children find hardest, if you want to know where the sticking points usually are.
And there's only one way to make something automatic. You do it again and again, until you don't have to think about it.
Isn't that just drill?
There's a fair argument on the other side, and it's one of the longest-running debates in maths education.
People who want maths taught differently often compare it with music. If a child spent five years practising scales and never heard a song, they'd probably give up before they found out what music is for. Drill without a purpose makes maths feel like a punishment.
I think they're right about that. Where I'd disagree is with the idea that you have to choose. The basics without the problem solving is mindless repetition. The problem solving without the basics stalls, because you haven't got the tools. You need both, and each one makes the other worth doing.
Scoring a goal is the buzz. The basics are how you get there
Football makes this easy to see.
Ask a child why they love football and scoring will come up quickly. That buzz when the ball hits the net is what gets them out practising. Nobody works on their first touch for its own sake. They work on it because they want to score.
But they won't score in a proper match without the basics. Against real defenders, with no time on the ball, a goal comes from a clean first touch, a shot struck properly and a sense of where the space is. All things they've done hundreds of times when nobody was watching.
The goal gives them a reason to practise. The practice is what lets them score. Neither works on its own.
Maths is the same. Cracking a problem you've been stuck on gives you a small version of that buzz, and it's what makes a child want to get better. But they'll only get that feeling regularly if the basics are secure enough that they don't get stuck on 7 × 8 halfway through.
The difference is that footballers want to practise
There's one big difference, though, and I think it's the most interesting bit.
My son will spend ages practising football skills and shooting at goal. Nobody has to make him. He doesn't wait until he's good at something before practising it. He just keeps going, because he wants to get better at a game he loves.
Getting him to do the same with his maths homework was a different story. That's really where Trivela FC came from. I wondered whether turning maths practice into a football game might give him a reason to do it.
Parents already know practice matters. Telling them again doesn't help. The difficulty is getting children to do it, especially when it feels like one more piece of homework.
So the question isn't just how to get children to practise maths. It's how to give them a reason to want to get better at it.
Where a game fits, and where it doesn't
Trivela FC is a football game where children practise their maths basics as they play. The idea is to bring some of football's buzz to the practice, so the repetition that builds fluency happens while they're doing something they'd choose to do anyway.
It doesn't replace teaching. Teachers build the understanding: why 7 × 8 is 56, how multiplication connects to division, what to do with a problem you've never seen before. That's the music. What a game can help with is the part that needs volume, the practice that turns knowing something into knowing it without thinking.
If you want a place to start, our times tables pages take each table in turn.
The best players never stop doing the basics
Professional footballers still do passing drills at training. Nobody thinks that's beneath them. It's what lets them do everything else.
Maths is the same. The children who look as though they "just get it" have usually done a lot of quiet practice on the basics, so their attention is free for the interesting part.
If you've got a child who'd rather be playing football than doing maths, it might be worth giving Trivela FC a go. And if you do, I'd love to hear what you think.