When England play Argentina in the World Cup semi-finals, beware the laziest man on the pitch, writes Harry Mount

Lionel Messi is an idler hero. He is the greatest player on earth – possibly the best ever. But, for much of a game, he just strolls around, looking strangely detached from the sound and fury of the toiling footballers alongside him – both his opponents and his own side. And then, suddenly, he spots an opportunity, has a sudden injection of energy and scores a match-winning goal.

Erling Haaland, the Norwegian god who admittedly had an off game against England in the quarter finals, is the same. He’s the best Norwegian player of all time and a terrifyingly lethal striker. And do you know the average number of touches he makes a game? Only 24.53. That’s an awful lot of time spent idling on the pitch, doing not very much before pouncing.

Haaland is thoroughly aware of this. He said, ‘There has always been this discussion on how many times I should touch the ball. When I score, nobody talks about this but when I don’t, people start to mention my touches.’

This is the idler philosophy writ large. No, don’t laze about doing nothing for years on end. But do spend years learning, thinking, reading – or practising football. There’s no need to strive constantly.

Just wait – ideally learning more while you’re waiting – and then strike quickly and brilliantly when you’re called upon to perform.

Dr Johnson, patron saint of the Idler magazine, was like this. He’d spend weeks doing nothing – building up his stock of knowledge, chatting away and listening in the alehouses of London. And then, when his deadline loomed, he struck – Messi-like – with the finest pieces.

Messi, Haaland and Dr Johnson are the reverse of the drudges – the dreary figures who think that working away, year in, year out, is its own reward.

Yes, it’s true Messi and Haaland spent their youths rushing around football pitches, furiously learning their craft. But, once they’d learnt it, there was no need to advertise their industry pointlessly. They had created their genius – and they know when to use it best.

When I played football – badly – at school and university, I thought there was some undefined virtue in running up and down the pitch, tracking the ball while very rarely touching it. I probably ended up touching it as infrequently as Haaland. But, when I did touch it, those touches were never sublime.

The same applies in all creative worlds that depend on rare gifts. Most jobs do need you to turn up a lot and, as it were, put in a lot of touches. When I was a gossip columnist on the Telegraph and the Evening Standard, it would have been ludicrous for even the most gifted writers to only deign to write occasionally – the point of the job was to churn out around 10 items or so a day for the page.

But I’ve worked with genius columnists, who didn’t do much all week – except drink, chat and read the papers. But when they were called on to write their weekly column, the magic they’d developed – sometimes by years of early-career toiling; often by early years of reading and being school swots – suddenly kicked in.

One of them wrote sublime columns when so drunk that someone had to hold his hands up to the keyboard. Meanwhile, there were keen, non-genius strivers, who got up early and never touched a drop, who could never write a column to touch the drunk genius.

Of course, geniuses are thin on the ground. The strivers would have been even worse if they drank and got up late – so their energy had advanced them a certain distance in their careers.

But they would never catch up with the Messis and Haalands who do nothing – and then do everything.

Harry Mount is author of How England Made the English (Penguin)

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