Socionics in Sport

[NinjaTim]

I play a lot and watch a lot of sport, and as I have recently been looking into socionics more in depth, I wonder on the applicability of it to a sporting team. Most sports I do at the momet are small in terms of team size (tennis, 5 a side football, volleyball) but I have noticed that there are certain people I play best with, namely my kindred, activity and identity partners. Surprisingly to me, I do not play well with my dual, maybe this is due to a small sample size and thus external factors.

So I have a range of questions and it would be great to hear differing opinions. Also if anyone else has personal experience in such things, please discuss.

Most of the time I am going to refer to football (Soccer) as I know this sport best.
Also some of these questions assume similar skill/fitness level/experience.

Would having the whole team consisting of one quadra work well? In terms of both team cohesion and creativity?
What about having the defense as one quadra, midfield and forwards as another?

What intertype relations would theoretically work best between each position (ie should 2 forwards be identity, to best understand each others intentions and get into the right position to carry forward the attack. Or would this lack creativity, and make both forwards easier to mark for the defense)?

Are certain information elements more important in different positions? Maybe Se for defense, or Ne for a 'creative' midfield player? Or would this all depend on what types occupy other areas of the field?


So thats the basic questions for now, to get everyone thinking in the right vein. There are more, but I am sure they will come up at some point

[FDG]

Would having the whole team consisting of one quadra work well? In terms of both team cohesion and creativity?

It probably would, at least, in my experience. Finding people of a similar quadra whose style of play (and-or preferred role) is compatible with yours and with each other's might not be easy, though. My experiences tell me that teams where there's a large component of interacting opposite temperaments (i.e. IJs that must interact with IPs and EPs that must interact with EJs) don't work well, especially when extraverts are mixed together.

What about having the defense as one quadra, midfield and forwards as another?

I don't think it'd be optimal, because certain positions interact more strongly even if they don't share a common position in the pitch. Ex. wingers strongly interact with forwards even if they're midfielders, and external defenders strongly interact with wingers. Thus if you want to create compatibility, I believe a better solution would be to create two compatible "rings", one external (ext. defenders, wingers, attackers), one internal (central defenders, midfielders).

What intertype relations would theoretically work best between each position (ie should 2 forwards be identity, to best understand each others intentions and get into the right position to carry forward the attack. Or would this lack creativity, and make both forwards easier to mark for the defense)?

I believe shared rationality/irrationality is very important when we want to determine beforehand how compatible certain players will be. I used to play either as winger or ext. defender, and I remember I had the easiest time when my partner (i.e. defender if i was the winger, and vice versa) was an ISxj or even INFj - never had an experience with INTjs. Mostly, they would follow a certain predetermined scheme with some short-term fluctuations, thus I was able to try and be creative with my style of play while knowing that they'll be exactly where I want them to be if/when I want to pass. With EPs it didn't work so well, they would want me to always pass the ball immediately, and I felt pushed around...with other EJs well I think we just both moved way too much, thus we often happened to locate ourselves in mismatched positions.

That's my 2c, I didn't know socionics too well back then thus I didn't spend much time trying to memorize which personality went best with whom and in which role.

Are certain information elements more important in different positions? Maybe Se for defense, or Ne for a 'creative' midfield player? Or would this all depend on what types occupy other areas of the field?

I'm pretty sure information elements play a part in one's style, because barring difference in abilities, I can see how my general movements and patterns on the pitch are similar to those of other ENxjs. I think static types are better at being either forwards or defenders, dynamic types are best as wingers and/or creative midfielders.