As stated, the quantification of football intelligence has gone awry with some of these players - Rooney? Do you think it's possible to essentially be a pseudo-any-position-on-the-pitch-eclectic-tour de force, without footballing intelligence?
I think first and foremost, looking at players that divert from the mean narrows the pool considerably, as, if you find players who excel there, there's usually a reason that will come down to how they read and perceive the game - extremely slow, unathletic players as well as those who are absurdly athletically gifted who can process the game in real-time at accelerated speed and with interactive traits far outside that which normal/regular players can, have something otherworldly about them.
One of the easiest accusations to fling at extremely rapid players is that they can often be pace merchants or binary in their thinking, but then outliers come along who not only have pace, but understand how that ripple effect affects everything around them, and with that, they can put complex plans into place that foresee numerous outcomes and the contingencies - improvising on the hop, it may be seen as, but looked at with more scrutiny, you see a brain that is working just as fast as the body is, if not faster. Mbappe falls into this category; his understanding of range distance, spatials and his own threat via pace in and of itself, are off the charts. That he combines it all and takes advantage is special as very few players as fast as he is are going to be credited for their movement and guile off the ball or in setting up opposing players as foils in a grander scheme that they aren't yet privy to. In this regard, it's akin to chess, the more steps ahead the player he is, the smarter his game and ability to exploit the smallest windows of opportunity. Mbappe is as much a cunning schemer as he is an outrageous athlete; 1:1, it's difficult to determine whether he's got greater intelligence or athleticism as both are at the very top percentile in the game.
It's mostly established that truly unspectacular athletes who also happen to be considered amongst the best players active have to have a great deal of intelligence to negate their physical disadvantages. Scholes is usually the first name brought to the table at this juncture because his asthma, diminutive size and general lack of pace lend gravitas to the questioning of how he was able to do what he did time and again, in multiple positions, usually against far superior athletes. Others who used to tick that kind of box were Riquelme, Valeron, Valderrama and so forth, but all of them, sans Valeron, were strong, tall players who were incredibly difficult to dispossess even with touch contact, which adds a different dimension to how they solved problems, dimensions not accessible to someone like Scholes. If you scour the modern game and find standout midfielders who are not strong, fast or blessed with ridiculous amounts of stamina and yet they excel, you're more than likely dealing with a player whose in-game intelligence will be above average, at the least.
It's already been touched on in this thread, and threaded through my post that elusiveness, movement and the guile and speed of thought that not only sees the exploits but is working on how to use them to the advantage of the player at hand is generally seen as one of the major hallmarks of intelligent players - being one, two or three steps ahead without using excessive energy or physical advantages is special and is utilised in different ways across all positions on a pitch - that defender who is intercepting balls or effortlessly interjecting has to have a great deal of intelligence; what he's doing isn't happening by magic or osmosis; that midfielder running absolute rings around his opponents controlling the flow and rhythm of a game may have outstanding skill and footballing ability, but if he's frequently finding himself in acres of space and 'bending the game to his will' there is going to be a lot of intelligence on display.
An interesting player to throw into the mix for the discussion is the aged version of Messi. He breaks the rules in terms of ability, which then sort of bends all the rules for everything else. He can play at walking pace; see passes others can't; receive the ball without a jot of movement and be deadly with it; score on any touch he wants inside of 30 yards of goal - is that intelligence or just a level of brilliance that negates other factors? In isolation, yes, I think so, but then you add his elusiveness when he elects to inject it as well as his ability to foresee the use of himself as a decoy and foil from which he oscillates between passive and active - meaning, he's processing the best course of action in real time - and you have a player who, if you elect not to see it, is pure ability, or if you're looking at him as a whole package, is operating on at a level of intelligence that's rarely seen, especially so when you consider the more pure ability you have, the harder it is to be disassociative, or at least, the bigger the decision when you can rely purely on ability to affect everything all of the time by yourself, essentially.
For me, this thread has two paths: the very obvious, like I've mostly leaned on and then those who are rarely discussed because what they do/did doesn't strike the chord with what people generally deem football intelligence - Suarez is an example of a very clever player whom I doubt would get many shouts in a thread like this even it spanned a 1000 pages. There are dozens in that category, I would say.
