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Couldn't you understand, for example, the fact that not all football players are good coaches? Or the fact that not all military leaders are authors of groundbreaking works on strategy? Or that the creators of opening systems in chess or authors of excellent new ideas are more often players of average strength, rather than champions (and if they are champions, it turns out that they have an analyst somewhere on their team)?
The first example is silly. Football combines teamwork with individual skill in motor skills and ball control, and coaches are needed both to develop team strategy and to properly develop physical skills. A football player doesn't necessarily need to understand all of this. And besides, a coach is also, to some extent, a teacher, which is a completely separate skill, and naturally, not everyone possesses it.
The second example is closer to our situation. But the fact that not all the best military leaders wrote treatises on strategy doesn't mean that they don't understand strategy, does it? There also needs to be a desire to write, which lies in a somewhat different area, right?
As for chess champions... all the world chess champions who were active before the advent of computers made their mark with opening innovations and their own variations. But chess, for a person, before the advent of chess programs, was so vast that it is absolutely logical that it is simply impossible for one person, or even several dozen, to cover the analysis of all possible openings. And what does it have to do with who came up with a new idea in an opening and understanding the game???
And returning to the original question, according to what parameters did you assess the understanding of the game of top players, or rather, their weak understanding of the game? And I'm a little embarrassed to ask, but why did you decide that you yourself understand anything about it? Because so far, it looks very much like another armchair analyst, of which there are many on various streams.