Attitude or Ability - which is more important in young Footballers?
It’s an ongoing debate and the longer that I work in the industry, the more I am finding that, ‘Hard work’ does in fact beat ‘Talent.'
I was fortunate enough to be introduced to one of the country’s leading coaches, a number of years ago, who has been involved in the development of numerous Premier League players and England internationals.?He ranked the importance of attributes as the following:?
Despite my numerous attempts to prove him wrong, and even putting supremely talented individuals into top professional academies along the way, I was ultimately only able to prove him right.
I am currently working with 6”5ft U18 box to box midfield player Callum Morris, and for a big boy he has a great touch and vision (31 goal contributions so far this season), so he definitely has talent.
He wins every sprint and endurance test, at every team I have taken him to (including men’s teams at Step 4 and Step 5).?He can definitely run.
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Mentality - He’ll do anything it takes to chase his dream
How much is too much?
Callum played a full 90 minutes at Step 5 last night (7:45pm Kick Off), where his team were only able to field 9 regular players and had to field 2 retired players (manager & assistant manager) to make up the numbers.?He was very unfortunate to have an equalising goal wrongly ruled out for a foul on the keeper. ?
His College game kicked off at 11am today (less than 14 hours after last nights match had finished).?He has another college match on Friday morning, and then a little over 24 hours later has another Step 5 game (3pm Kick Off Saturday)
4 full 90 minutes in less than 5 full days, whilst carrying a small knock.?His mentality puts some professional players to shame.