To be honest, and I know this is not the sentiment that you’re supposed to be feeling, I’ve experienced the World Cup in Seattle so far mostly as an inconvenience — with the mandatory pedestrian area around our office, and crowds on the trains. However, for yesterday’s U.S.-Australia game, with some tickets running in the thousands of dollars, it was refreshing “to see a crowd in Seattle chanting ‘USA’ rather than burning American flags and marching on behalf of terror organizations,” as Ari Hoffman notes. Indeed.
The True Star
But on the subject of soccer, our biochemist colleague Emily Reeves offers a wonderful and inspiring appreciation of the real star of the FIFA show: the human foot. In few sports, perhaps, does the foot stand out more. She writes at Townhall:
Seattle, where I live and work, is hosting the World Cup. Tens of thousands are gathering, paying thousands to watch matches like Belgium vs. Egypt or the USA vs. Australia. As players like Christian Pulisic weave through defenders, millions like me will find our eyes drawn to the live exhibition of a designed masterpiece: the human foot.
The human foot is beautiful and versatile. Dance shows off its beauty, and football, aka soccer, its multifunctionality. The most famous plays in the sport’s history would not be possible without the amazing ability of the foot to reconfigure, stiffen, become flexible, tilt inwards and outwards, and pivot right or left.
In 1986, Diego Maradona, an Argentine soccer prodigy, scored what is considered the greatest World Cup goal ever. How? Through rapid ankle movements. Maradona had perfected ankle control that enabled constant, subtle changes in his foot angle. This allowed him to keep the ball within inches of his foot while accelerating during the famous 11-second run, evading five defenders and the goalkeeper.
Biomechanically, Maradona relied on repeated plantarflexion — the powerful push-off motion practiced in calf raises — for explosive acceleration. He coupled this with rapid ankle inversion (tilting of the foot inward), which is anatomically allowed by four stabilizing ligaments. These aspects of foot design enabled the sharp directional changes he made without losing balance or speed.
To understand this as a biologist, I stare at a foot cadaver image on my laptop. I see a minimalist structure with a compact assembly of 26 bones, 33 joints, all bootstrapped by a network of ligaments, tendons, and connective tissue. Every bone and ligament seems part of the whole, yet the pieces and connections allow the foot to be flexible, absorbing shock and changing movement.
“Ask Hard Questions”
She concludes:
As you watch matches over the coming weeks, consider a few questions. In the context of an elite football sporting competition, does the foot appear poorly designed? If the human foot is well designed, what would that imply about its origin? Can highly optimized systems arise through unguided evolution, or is intelligent design a better explanation? Be curious. Ask hard questions. And marvel at the ingenious design of the human foot.
Yes, do that. Read the rest at “The Design of Feet on Display at the World Cup” at Townhall.