WHAT IS TALENT?
Ryan Keaney Ryan's decided to make his debut for IBWM by tackling a big issue, let the debate begin...
There is a wonderful football adage that has been used to describe many of the finest players to have ever graced the game, especially when they have just produced a moment out of the ordinary or are in the middle of a rich vein of form – "He's the first one on the training pitch in the morning and the last one in for a shower."
David Beckham, Gianfranco Zola, Alan Shearer, Ryan Giggs – It's been used time and time again by managers and fellow players to explain the stars in a particular side. Almost instantly though, a studio guest will have the temerity to insist that "you can't teach the things he does" as though all of the hard work and extra training that viewers have just been told he puts in, is actually of no use.
"He's a talent," they'll say. But, what is talent?
The dictionary definition of the word talent is "natural aptitude or skill". That means Lionel Messi, the most talented football in the world, walked onto a football pitch aged seven or eight capable of doing the things he does on a weekly basis on Barcelona. If it's a natural thing, then that's the only explanation for his world class performances. It can't have been anything to do with the coaching staff at the renowned La Masia training academy.
Talent, by definition, implies something written into a player's genetic code. They literally have football in their DNA, don't they?
Following an incredible loan spell at Bolton Wanders last season, Daniel Sturridge has been able to prove himself worthy of a chance in the Chelsea first team. Having scored eight goals in 12 Premier League games towards the backend of the 2010/11 season and with the arrival of a coach who utilises a more-expansive playing style, the English forward has featured more and more in the starting line-up of the Premier League title challengers. Just a few weeks ago, he scored an exquisite goal against Sunderland.
A pass was intercepted in midfield by Chelsea midfielder Raul Meireles. Looking up, the Portuguese midfielder saw Sturridge setting off through the middle of a Sunderland defence that hadn't regrouped and a pass was played into his path. Daniel didn't take an initial touch as he chased the ball down and as the goalkeeper raced off his line, the forward's first and only contact with the ball was to back heel it beyond the wrong-footed Simon Mignolet and trickling inside the post for a goal.
"That's just pure inspiration," was the line of one commentator as Sturridge lapped up the adulation of the Chelsea fans, "a moment that sums up the talent of this boy, this English boy." On one radio station covering the game we were reminded that "moments like that just can't be taught." Expect when the goal scorer spoke to Chelsea TV after the game he admitted, "I've done it a few times in training… It's something I'm used to scoring." Very quickly the goal becomes less about improvisation and more about utilising a skill that had been perfected on the training pitch. Is that talent or hard work and proper preparation paying off?
Take Wayne Rooney's passing for example. Time and time again, the England forward controls the ball in the centre of the Old Trafford pitch and "without thinking" is able to spray a pass towards Antonio Valencia. Now is that "pure instinct" or a well-drilled tactic to open up Manchester United's play?
People that watch a lot of Antonio Valencia will know what an incredibly disciplined winger he is. When his team are in possession, he can always be found hugging the touchline, getting chalk on his boots – in a prime position to receive the ball and attack the full-back one-on-one. He's not an adventurous player in terms of roaming away from the flank without the ball. He stays way out right wing and keeps the opposition defence stretched.
If they know all of that, then I'm fairly sure Wayne Rooney knows it too and he knows Valencia is an excellent "out ball." It helps to relieve pressure in the centre of the park and sets United on their way, prodding their way through from a different angle.
All that Rooney has to do is make sure his pass isn't over hit and flies over Valencia's head and isn't so tamely hit that the left-back can comfortably get a foot to it; and that's footballing 101.
When Peter Beardsley played for England, he commented time and time again on who he favoured leading the line ahead of him. Beardsley loved linking up with Gary Lineker as the now Match of the Day host was always predictable in the positions that he took up and the runs that he made. The former Newcastle forward could make passes without looking as he knew Lineker would be on hand to race beyond the defence or apply the tap-in.
Lineker, by his own admission, was never the greatest player. He couldn't dribble past players, pass through the eye of a needle or necessarily create chances for others; but he did know how to be in the right place at the right time to score goals. Is that talent? Maybe. Is it intelligent decision-making learned from watching the players around him? Absolutely. Without having skill in abundance, Lineker was able to carve out a fantastic career, winning three Player of the Year awards, a Golden Boot, the FA Cup and the Cup Winners' Cup, for himself thanks to impeccable decision-making.
There remains a thought that talent is essentially a set of skills and abilities that all young players who "make it" possess. Core strengths they showcase at an early age that mark them out as eventual top flight footballers and those that don't show flashes of brilliance early on, can't and won't get to the very top. Yet, Norwich City are doing their very best to shatter that myth.
It used to be only the most talented youngsters that got their chance at the top. The young players spotted at a very tender age, whipped into shape by the Premier League or Championship academy they attended and taught the way of the very top leagues. Everyone else could forget about it as nothing more than a fleeting notion that one day; they would visit Anfield, Villa Park and/or Stamford Bridge in a season.
Except that when Paul Lambert led the Canaries to the home of Liverpool and left with a well-deserved point last month, he did it with the help of eight players who have experience of playing non-league football. One or two players slipping through the net and tumbling down the tiers can be excused – their talent might be unnoticed for one reason or another. Players can be poor when they know they are being watched, injury can strike, scouts can get it wrong or they might be after an entirely different type of player.
Case in point; Chris Smalling, who was playing for non-league Maidstone United just three years ago and more significantly, Norwich's Anthony Pilkington, Grant Holt, Steve Morison, Russell Martin, Bradley Johnson, Leon Barnett, Andrew Crofts and Marc Tierney who all contributed to the draw with Liverpool at Anfield. How did the football world get all of them so wrong? No doubt they were all told at different times that they weren't talented enough to make it. And no doubt, the men that told them are doing their best to hide their faces right now. Norwich aren't, by any means, just making up numbers in the English top flight this season either and it's thanks to those former non-league stars that they are performing so well.
They are of course the players that come along in the wrong footballing generation. The aforementioned Grant Holt is constantly described as a throwback centre forward who would have filled his boots in the 1970's. Thirteen years ago, West Ham broke the transfer record for a 16 year-old when they paid Arsenal £400,000 for Leon Britton. Back then, Leon was described as the "hottest talent in the country" but struggled to get his chance in English football. His diminutive stature and preference to actually play football meant he struggled in the rough and tumble of English football.
Ten years on from his debut for Swansea City and he has taken to the Premier League like a duck to water. Alongside Joe Allen and Mark Gower in the centre of the Welsh club's midfield, his way of playing to benefit from the space on the pitch is exactly where the modern game is headed. It's all about moving into gaps and releasing the ball quickly. Britton's pass completion rate is amongst the best in the Premier League and were he a few years younger, he'd sit alongside Jack Wilshere and Tom Cleverley as the future of the England midfield. Doesn't that make him talented?
Gymnasts are quite happy to admit that they fall off the apparatus that they train on more times than they actually stay on; but there is always something to learn from a fall. There is a lesson to learn from each and every mistake. Fans forget that when a sixteen year-old footballer makes their first professional debut, there has almost always been 10,000 hours of training and preparation put in. He has misplaced passes. He has fired shots high and wide over the bar. He has even failed to control the simplest of angled balls. And he'll do it again because the player is far from the finished article.
Using the world "talent" ignores the time and effort that needs to put into becoming a professional footballer. It's not something that anyone wakes up and suddenly realises that they are. "Talent" is a myth.
Ryan is the man behind the excellent Football Project website and podcast availalbe here, and is on Twitter in a personal capacity here
Reader Comments (3)
I’m going to try and be as charitable as possible here, but this article is, for the most part, out-and-out waffle – a series of tenuous apercus that are, by and large, unrelated to the notional idea being ‘explored’: i.e. “What is talent?” (The clue is in the title, no). As far as I can tell, it doesn’t begin to define its terms, let alone answer this question…
Take the extended digression about Rooney spraying a ball out to Valencia. What, exactly, is your point here? I don’t think anyone in their right mind would claim that a footballer could NOT be taught how to spray a pass out to the wing or hug the touchline. What does that have to do with the concept of natural talent? This is extremely limp ‘straw man’ argument. “It is sometimes said that…”
Worse than being poorly argued, it is actually meaningless in places: the paragraph that begins “There remains a thought that talent is essentially a set of skills and abilities...”, for instance. In addition, it abounds in cliché (Valencia having “chalk on his boots”) and could have done with being properly proofed. Messi is not a "talented football”, for instance. And while at it, they might have taken out this godawful pair of sentences, which combine the woolly thinking with the poor expression: “Talent, by definition, implies something written into a player's genetic code. They literally have football in their DNA, don't they?” Benefit of the doubt on that “literally”.
But, as I say, far more of a problem than style is its substance: it doesn't actually argue anything, really. Wherever it does make a cursory effort to develop the initial question, it is just woefully confused. For example, near the beginning you assert that, if the concept of ‘natural talent’ has any merit, then Messi ought to have been able to do what he can do today when he was aged 8 or 9. You seem to think that because an aptitude/talent/skill is “natural”, it’s there from the start and remains unaltered. This is a fallacy. First, several natural (and non-automatic) attributes require training: walking, for example, or remembering. Second, we have many capacities encoded in DNA (natural talents) that are never 'actualized', that remain hidden, virtual, potential (hypothetically, the world’s greatest javelin thrower might go through life never throwing a javelin). Third, DNA itself is not ‘pure’ nature, for it is not without its own artifice, its own history, bound up with ‘cultural’ requirements (that’s what adaptive natural selection is: being fit for an ever-changing environment).
Anyway, it seems to me that your assertion here about Messi is a clumsy way of trying to claim – rightly enough – that La Masia had a role in his formation as a player (NB. not that La Masia necessarily imposes uniform training on the young footballer as raw material). But if it were all a question *solely* of training, such that there were no significant prior differences of talent brought to La Masia (or equivalents) in an 8-year-old body, then all people who come through academies could, in principle, be successfully moulded into pro footballers, no, with a uniform set of skills? Or, again, is it not more likely the case that there’s something PHYSICAL / NATURAL that distinguishes them, beyond attitude? Messi is not the player he is because he was top of the class, the best learner at La Masia, the best trainer... Messi *could* do those things as an 8yo: he had the balance, control, imagination; he just needed to grow stronger, more powerful (and he learns how to connect those skills to team play at La Masia. For, as with evolution so with football: no skill has value in itself; its utility must be measured in relation to a milieu, which, in football, is provided by a team).
Take the Sturridge example: here, you seem to think there’s an either/or between natural talent and honing skills in training, such that the latter indicates the skill (Sturridge’s back-heel, in this case) isn’t natural. Wrong. Training simply means that Player X is improving a skill that Player X is capable of doing (let’s call it “ball sense” or “coordination” for sake of argument) and that Player Y isn’t capable of doing. The gap between Player X and Player Y – and not the difference between Player X’s skill now, and that skill-level in ten years’ time – indicates the talent of the former.
The utter confusion of this article is summed up by the use of concepts that remain entirely to be demonstrated (talent, most saliently), yet, because they are crucial for the overall sense, are tossed in the text willy-nilly – “It used to be only the most talented youngsters that got their chance at the top” – only for the author to finish by saying talent is “a myth”. Well, is it or isn't it?
I would suggest that you need to re-think this in terms of those skills that DON’T involve teammates and those that do (i.e. distinguishing between those skills that are the result of intrinsic properties, or extrinsic, connective skills articulated to a context). Once you've done that, think about the individual talents that can and can’t be taught. True dribbling skill is a great example – so vital and rare, yet if it was really teachable/learnable (to the level it needs to be to take a top-level, fit, fast defender out of the game), as you seem to suggest, then it would be taught everywhere, from La Masia to Luton. And, finally, don’t worry about whether someone’s done it on the training ground before – all that proves is whether it was ad hoc, not whether it is or isn’t an expression of innate talent.
Apologies if this is a little severe. A worthy effort, but woolly is not the word.
My little experience tells me - having tried to write the odd article myself and commented on quite a few more - that pulling something apart is quite a lot easier than putting something together. And as soon as a commenter starts adding asides about typos to his criticisms of the content, I begin to think his agenda is partly hostile, not 'trying to be charitable' at all. Your insight into this topic, Scott, would stand by itself, independent of your attempts to be some sort of media reviewer.
For me, the piece takes on an interesting topic and says some useful things. I agree, for example that the 'you can't teach that' line peddled by many pundits is a tiresome cliche with limited truth behind it. The point about gymnasts falling off the bar is also a good one - they fall off because they're attempting to do something they haven't yet mastered. Practise it time after time after time and they'll eventually get it right, thus pushing themselves beyond their previous level. Same with Rooney, Beckham and Hoddle and their long passes. Don Bradman learnt to bat by practising hour after hour, day after day with a single stump
If anything, there isn't quite enough emphasis (though the point is made) in the article, on the role of luck or, more precisely, circumstance. I've recently read the book by UK table-tennis player Matthew Syed and he says there that his path was partly determined a) by being bought a table-tennis table at a young age and b) growing up in a street in the catchment area of a school where the country's best coach of the sport taught. Talent might be over-rated and hard-work and practice under-rated but circumstance plays a huge part in the direction our careers take. I wonder, for example, how many potential Indian and Pakistani footballers might have been lost to the game because their parents have steered them away from it at a young age, whereas Messi, Rooney et al presumably got all the family encouragement they needed to develop.
A combination of the three then? Talent/aptitude, circumstance, practice.
I find this nature vs. nuture debate a very interesting one. Although you alluded to ittoward the end of your article with "Fans forget that when a sixteen year-old footballer makes their first professional debut, there has almost always been 10,000 hours of training and preparation put in"... I think you could have explored the 10,000 hours theory a bit more. It is introduced a bit here: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/can-10000-hours-of-practice-make-a-genius/20197