[长难句突破]

If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in 2006's World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the later months.

主体句式：You would most likely find a noteworthy quirk.

结构分析：这个句子使用了虚拟语气，因此If引导的从句中用了"you were"的搭配。冒号后面的句子是对"a noteworthy quirk"的补充说明。

[全文译文]

If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in 2006's World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the later months. If you then examined the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup and professional ranks, you would find this strange phenomenon to be even more pronounced.

What might account for this strange phenomenon? Here are a few guesses: a) certain astrological signs confer superior soccer skills; b) winter-born babies tend to have higher oxygen capacity, which increases soccer stamina; c) soccer-mad parents are more likely to conceive children in springtime, at the annual peak of soccer mania; d) none of the above.

Anders Ericsson, a 58-year-old psychology professor at Florida State University, says he believes strongly in "none of the above." Ericsson grew up in Sweden, and studied nuclear engineering until he realized he would have more opportunity to conduct his own research if he switched to psychology. His first experiment, nearly 30 years ago, involved memory: training a person to hear and then repeat a random series of numbers. "With the first subject, after about 20 hours of training, his digit span had risen from 7 to 20," Ericsson recalls. "He kept improving, and after about 200 hours of training he had risen to over 80 numbers."

This success, coupled with later research showing that memory itself is not genetically determined, led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing is more of a cognitive exercise than an intuitive one. In other words, whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit in their abilities to memorize, those differences are swamped by how well each person "encodes" the information. And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process known as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.

Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying expert performers in a wide range of pursuits, including soccer. They gather all the data they can, not just performance statistics and biographical details but also the results of their own laboratory experiments with high achievers. Their work makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers -- whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming -- are nearly always made, not born.

如果你打算调查一下2006年世界杯锦标赛上所有足球运动员的出生证明，那么你很有可能发现一个值得注意的怪现象：优秀足球运动员更可能出生于每年的前几个月而不是后几个月。如果你接着调查为世界杯和各大职业联赛提供球员的欧洲各个国家的青年队，你会发现这一奇怪的现象更为明显。

出现这一奇怪的现象原因是什么呢？下面是一些猜测：a）某种星象学的征兆使人具备更高的足球技能；b）冬季出生的婴儿往往有较高的血氧含量，这增加了踢足球所需要的耐力；c）热爱足球的父母更可能在春季（每年足球狂热的鼎盛时期）怀孕；d）以上各项都不对。

58岁的安德斯•埃里克森是佛罗里达州立大学的一名心理学教授，他说，他坚信"以上各项都不对"这一猜测。在瑞典长大的埃里克森，早先从事核工程学的研究，直到后来他认识到如果自己转向心理学领域，就会有更多机会从事自己的研究。他的首次试验是大约30年以前进行的一个与记忆有关的试验：训练一个人先听一组任意挑选的数字，然后重复这些数字。"在经过大约20小时的训练之后，第一个试验对象的数字跨度从7个上升到20个，" 埃里克森回忆说。"该试验对象不断进步，在接受大约200个小时的训练后，他复述的数字已经达到80多个。"

这一试验的成功，连同后来证明的记忆本身不是遗传决定的研究，使得埃里克森得出结论，即记忆过程是一种认知练习，而不是一种本能行为。换句话说，无论两个人天生的记忆力能力存在怎样的差异，这些差异都会被个人如何恰当地"解读"记忆信息所消除。埃里克森确信，了解如何有目的地解读信息的最佳方法就是众所周知的刻意练习过程。刻意练习需要的不仅仅是简单地重复一个任务。相反，它包括确定明确的目标、获得即时的反馈以及技术与结果的结合等。

因此，埃里克森和他的同事开始研究包括足球领域在内的各种不同领域中专业执行者。他们收集了一切可能得到的资料，不仅包括统计数据和传记详细资料，还包括他们对成功人士进行的实验室实验结果。他们的研究得出了令人惊讶的结论--我们通常称为天分的特征被高估了。或者换句话说，专业人员--无论是在记忆还是手术方面，在芭蕾还是计算机编程领域--几乎都是后天培养的，而不是天生的。