My silly bewilderment

What is talent in football?


This silly bewilderment has been bothering me enough for some time now..however it wasn't since last night , after reading all this praise for Ibrahimovic and how talented he is, that i managed somehow , to end up reading somewhere on the internet about a dead Belgian singer . His name was Jacques Brel ,
apparently he was a great musician and he said something very interesting in my opinion , here's what he said :

" Talent doesn't exist. Talent means to have the desire(or yearning?) to do something"

Do you agree with this ?

Do you think players are born talented and meant to become more skillful because of it , or what they are today is just the result of training and exercise solely ?
Is it something all people have but few are able to express ?
Did Messi bought it on E-bay when others weren't watching

I'd say my opinion about what i think talent is , or isn't , however i want to hear your part first , since it will be more genuine this way .Of course,i will definitely say my part later.

So , let's hear it , what is talent in football.

Well you can't really be born with it. However it comes through with age. It's kinda like you're born with it, except it comes through later.

Like the way you control the ball, pass etc just naturally comes through.

Yohan Modric wrote:Well you can't really be born with it. However it comes through with age. It's kinda like you're born with it, except it comes through later.

Like the way you control the ball, pass etc just naturally comes through.

How . How it comes through later ?

Take Pato for example , he always had a great touch on the ball since he was 17 , however , after his long spell on the sidelines , he has yet to show any of it.

Well, the definition I know is this:
Talent is what you are born with, skill is what you make of it through training and exercise.

VivaStPauli wrote:Well, the definition I know is this:
Talent is what you are born with, skill is what you make of it through training and exercise.

But how can anyone tell who's born talented ? We can define skill is being created with time and we can understand that it only improves with exercise.

Who can say that this player has been born with this or that talent ? It seems to me that when we say a player is talented , is to show recognition about how good he has become or is , at some point .

The will to reach this level of skill , is talent , imo.

Dante wrote:

VivaStPauli wrote:Well, the definition I know is this:
Talent is what you are born with, skill is what you make of it through training and exercise.

But how can anyone tell who's born talented ? We can define skill is being created with time and we can understand that it only improves with exercise.

Who can say that this player has been born with this or that talent ? It seems to me that when we say a player is talented , is to show recognition about how good he has become or is , at some point .

The will to reach this level of skill , is talent , imo.

From the first time they touch it. Have you ever had a friend who was just upsettingly good at physical things? You teach them how to swing a baseball bat, they start hitting home runs; you teach them how to kick a soccer ball, they dribble circles around you two days later.

I'm not a very coordinated person, and with hard work I can reach a competent - even good - level in sports. But there were always people better than me, even people who had just started playing. That's talent.

That's a good question you made and i have a very good example. There's a player in the greek super league , his name is Karagounis and he's playing for a club called Atromitos. He's 21 years old and he's from the city i live in .

Many of my friends were on the same football academy with him and they know him pretty well , since they begun playing football together. I can tell you this 100% , he wasn't the best there , certainly not the most talented of the academy , my friends still argue that there were others more talented.

But he had it in him to become a pro one day , despite not being so talented as others. With time , he actualy did , he spent hours and hours training , didn't stop persuing to become better and lead a very careful lifestyle . All of them continued to play football , but the rest whilst being more "talented" than him , never reached his standards . I think this was because they didn't tried or wanted it so much like him.

Of course , there are always people who will be better , no matter how long or how much you try . There are more suited to do so.
What makes these people , who will eventualy become pro players though ,be so talented , if not the passion and the will to drive them to this point?

Imo , the only talent you are born with and will define how much you will be able to do or not to do some stuff later on , is your height , metabolism and two pair of healthy legs .

All the rest we tag on players as talent , is actualy the result of their desire which make it look easy doing stuff so effortlessly , sometimes. If one loves football and he does everything possible to improve and become better , or even make football better in a way , that's talent according to me.

If it's a physical thing then how can you explain someone like Garrincha? One of his legs was longer than the other one.

I kind of agree with OP, but at the same time I think it depends on how early a person starts to "want it"

Zealous wrote:If it's a physical thing then how can you explain someone like Garrincha? One of his legs was longer than the other one.

I kind of agree with OP, but at the same time I think it depends on how early a person starts to "want it"

Kinda like Cambiasso ? anyway, it didn't prove serious enough to prevent him from playing ,but of course , it's not just physical .. him having this problem but still having the will to become the player he was , what's that if not talent .

I think , no one is born with certain qualities to play football , except the basics related to physical condition , Miccoli for example would never make a good GK , no matter how much he might have wanted this. But his small stature meant better speed and more balanced movement and this easily and naturaly made it better for him to become a pacey forward , with very good technique.

The technique does come with training , not because he is small . That's what i am trying to say , of course players have a certain beggining physicaly , but what they become of themselves later , isn't because they were born for it , rather their love to become this or that is the definition of how talented they are.

this is basically the nature v nurture argument.

research has shown that although nurture (in this example- the desire to do something) does play a role, but is much less a factor than nature (what you are born with).

so imo from what i have experienced and what i have seen to be true, the biggest factor in determining how good a player will be is his genetic make up.. but of course that would mean basically nothing if the player didnt have the desire to perfect these skills.

vanDEEZ wrote:this is basically the nature v nurture argument.

research has shown that although nurture (in this example- the desire to do something) does play a role, but is much less a factor than nature (what you are born with).

so imo from what i have experienced and what i have seen to be true, the biggest factor in determining how good a player will be is his genetic make up.. but of course that would mean basically nothing if the player didnt have the desire to perfect these skills.

Very good post there . Without this desire , every natural advantage one may be predestined to have , will mean nothing really.

So , what is talent if not this desire . When this desire meets the natural advantages a 'player' might possess , then it makes for a great talent in the making .

In a poor generalisation , talent you aren't born with , you are just given the standard tools as anyone so to built on what you desire the most . And anyone will preffer what naturaly comes easier for him , only requirement that his talent isn't up against his nature.

Definitely disagreed with the OP. Talent is inborn, can be polished, but if you don't have it you never will. You can't ask Mascherano to finish like Villa, he can practice for 1,000 hours and will never be able to do it. Likewise, when scouts look for potential talents they don't look for the kid that "want to win the most", although I'm sure this matters, they look for the kid that has better control, does tricks, can dribble past opponents, finishes best, etc. All things that fall under the technique spectrum, which is largely talent. Read any interview with scouts and you'll see that most agree with this.

I liken talent to the ability to learn
Look at some young football prodigies, even Pato since you used him, he picked up the sport quickly to the point where it seems like it was natural. Learning quickly at a skill you're already good at, it gives that illusion. Born with I don't buy into

However, I remember watching a documentary about Ronaldo (R9 not Cristiano) and he said how he would play football every single day when he was a child. He also said that he wasn't the best among his friends (not sure if modesty) but that people were better than him even at that age. What separated them was his ability to continuously work at his craft. The rest is history.

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard

So is it possible to make the perfect footballer through breeding like with a racehorse or rodeo bull?

Footballers usually marry skinny models that add very little to an effective genetic make up. If we can get footballers to marry really good female footballers we may be on to something.

VivaST and stevieg really summed up my view on this.

Talent is something you possess, but won't know it until you make the move and do something..

Very good quote by stevieg

From the first time they touch it. Have you ever had a friend who was just upsettingly good at physical things? You teach them how to swing a baseball bat, they start hitting home runs; you teach them how to kick a soccer ball, they dribble circles around you two days later.

From there, you can work hard and develop your skills, but without talent, you most likely wouldn't make it very far.

Zealous wrote:If it's a physical thing then how can you explain someone like Garrincha? One of his legs was longer than the other one.

I kind of agree with OP, but at the same time I think it depends on how early a person starts to "want it"

I think there's more than just the physical aspect of it; hard work is of course incredibly important. I'm sure we've also seen people with amazing talent blow it by not caring enough, falling into drugs/alcohol, not working out, not trying etc. The two have to be combined to be great, and you can still become very very good simply through hard work. But the fact of the matter is that you can train me from age 1 until I die, and have me do nothing but play, and I will still never be able to dribble like Messi.

It's my belief that it boils down to how much time was spent practicing/learning/gaining experience at the most impressionable ages.

You don't see middle-aged musical prodigies being discovered do you? Once thing that masters in any discipline have in common is that they started at an extremely young age and have the passion for it.

There's an interesting report a few years ago in the Holland Herald of all places about Chess masters and referencing some interesting figures from football; It seems that the majority of football players are born during months that put them in the older bracket of their age category and at such young ages there are major physical differences and this helps them win/enjoy success and develop a passion for it.

Think about your ability to talk. Hard to pronounce foreign sounds are just that, hard because you've never come across them or learn to make them yet native speakers do it like it's second nature because it's among the first things they learnt and they don't even think about it.

Language isn't natural, we have to learn it, especially at such a young age or we have problems with it later. Can you imagine learning how to play football or an instrument at an age where something as complicated as language is "easily" learnt? Heck, can you even remember how you learnt your first words? You just know them. Imagine applying the same to kicking a football. The same applies in reverse, the dificulty you have learning a new language is the same as improving yourself in football - the major obstacle is to transfer your active conscious translation into something that happens subconsciously and becomes second nature which is easier said than done.

Subconscious intelligence also plays a part though and would require a much deeper discussion on how "innate" it is. but essentially everyone can be a good football player if they start training at 2 years old or so. Anyone "intelligent" can be a master at anything if they begin young and have the passion to invest a lot of time. At older ages it would simply take an exponentially longer amount of time to learn something new and even then it won't be to the same standard as when it's learned at a younger age.

Great debate..
I think Jacques Brel's quote is partially true.. The natural qualities means nothing without hard working. As far as I am concerned in football, talent is more important than in other domains of life. I have few friends that play football for about 10 years, but they still play in a 5th league, and they work very hard.. They just don't poses enough native quality to be at a high level.. You can become good with very hard working, but you can't compete with those who have both natural qualities and they work hard.

We can take ourselves as examples.. My uncle was a math teacher, My dad works as Informatician and he's a good chess player, my brother and my uncle's cousins are both working as Informaticians.. And i have predisposition to maths too,i understand it quick but without exercising every day i wouldn't be able to compete with the best in my home-town. But i am a bad painter for example

Zealous wrote:So is it possible to make the perfect footballer through breeding like with a racehorse or rodeo bull?

Footballers usually marry skinny models that add very little to an effective genetic make up. If we can get footballers to marry really good female footballers we may be on to something.

Thiago and Rafinha are the offspring of a WC winner and a professional volleyball player

I wish you guys would stop talking as if football itself is a skill...

Think of it in terms of muscle control and prediction through [subconscious] perception because in the end you're simply using your muscles to manipulate a difficult tool and predict where that tool will fly based on its trajectory and movement.

serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro05/web1/avenditta.html is a decent article on how much of a role the nervous system has in something athletic and the differences in sports use of the brain. (There are some sports which simply "age" better)

Talent is genes and genes do exist.