Talent. ˈtalənt/
noun
synonyms: flair, aptitude, facility, gift, knack, technique, touch, bent, ability, expertise, capacity, power,
It is the quest for talent everybody takes a different path. Do you look for the performers and do you look for potential? In the ProFormance world more often than not we look at potential to make the elite level. Potential to be signed on as a full time player for a club within the football league system.
Football is often called the game of opinions and there is no one set skill or method to define talent. This can be the case in most situations when looking at talent, in music, art, film etc…
At The FA Talent ID Conference in 2016 The Brit School made a presentation of their ideas and head of the school Stuart Worden says the school’s recipe for success is its pupils
being unique, being yourself, being grown up enough to take responsibility and not being held back by a lack of ambition.
But having one location and bringing together many like minded people with different talents is not the same as our football world. Identifying talent for them will be quantified in a different way to the way we look at players.
In football the game itself has many different moments, many different skills and players have different skill sets. I will also look for players who have 10 out of 10 attributes. Do they have the potential to have 2/3 10 out of 10 attributes as they go into the senior game. Speed? Insight? Ball Striking? Ball mastery? Mental Strength?
When a club selected it’s pre academy group, it’s 10-20 players to sign for the U9 season, the club looks at the profile they feel will give them the best chance that as many of that original group can make the U14-U16 age group. I would like to see clubs take a more balanced view. Performers, Potential, Physical, Technical, Late Birthdays. But… that’s easy to say, how do you turn away performers?
If a child, is 9, he’s in the top 20 in London, that is talent. That is potential and performance. But inevitably other factors that affect talent will determine where their child ends up. Training? School Life? Home Life? Psychological factors. It’s a real hard journey to make it in any talent industry and with football, as the potential to earn life changing some of money go up, so do the pressures that come with it. Ultimately those pressures can have the biggest impact on talent.
I really enjoyed a book called The Goldmine Effect by Rasmus Ankersen, worth looking up if you are in the Talent, I was lucky enough to meet Rasmus too. A pretty impressive guy. Rasmus poses some good questions, facts I didn’t even know.
Why have the best middle distance runners grown up in the same Ethiopian village? Why are the leading female golfers from South Korea? How did one athletic club in Kingston, Jamaica, succeed in producing so many world-class sprinters?
Can you learn from the talent heavy locations and create you own Talent Gold Mine?
Rasmus also talked about opportunities in identifying transferable skills that could be transferred. He gave a great example of a friend in Malaysia who owned a service security company. He found his own talent goldmine in hiring taxi drivers. He spotted that the critical success factor – the willingness to go the extra mile for the customer – is the same in both roles. I have certainly opened my focus since meeting Rasmus is what I look for in football talent. Look at England goalkeepers? The top four England goalkeepers were not specialists in football goalkeeping at 14 and 15. They had other sports, rugby or cricket, these skills are related to football and so the skills were transferable.
We all have a different idea of talent, but be open minded to what you are seeing, how it relates to the bigger picture, and what the potential of the talent you see is.