Talent - The Most Overused Word In Sport

After 20 years involved with the professional sport industry and at the cold face of an academy management team in a highly successful professional football club, Solutions Mindset know first-hand what it takes to create successful players and teams. fcbusiness showcases extracts from performance and leadership coach, Steve Sallis’ book ‘Educating Football’.

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work” – Stephen King

You often hear people in sport say, “Talent this, talent that”. My response… “Boring”.

How many times have we all heard this word used about young athletes. Some as young as even six years old! One of the best player agents I know is guy from called Conor Hayden who gives me lots of work with players, always says to me “Steve, imagine telling Ronaldo to his face he was born and not made! He’d chin you”.

The actual definition of talent is as follows: “(Someone who has) a natural ability to be good at something, especially without being taught”

So the above definition may well sound exciting to the average parent, but to me it is boring. Simply, talent without application and commitment to work hard is pointless. If you go through the statistics of football and England School boy players that eventually fail to achieve professional status you will be alarmed. And not just in the world of football, I mean any sport. Being the best at fifteen years old therefore could be seen as waste of time.

We know that teenagers are more likely than adults to become wayward in their behaviours. In terms of gender, boys are more physiologically designed to achieve less than girls. Brain science means that boys are risk takers. The reason that I am saying this is because if you use football as an example, when talented young men have a bit of success, they often have not got the emotional intelligence to harness that talent. Because after all, hard work has not really been needed thus far, to get them to this place which, if we are honest, equates to just a small amount of success, on their tiny journey to this stage.

I truly believe that most young people do not “mentally correlate” any sort of hard work to their futures. This, consequently, is such a dangerous place for them, and where correct family support is vital.

I have found that many of these “talented” kids are surrounded by numpty people. These include:

– Clueless parents that live their life through their child and see them as a potential pay packet and pension scheme.

– Agents that simply have no skills in life what so ever and somehow surround themselves around children and amazingly offer the advice they have no right or expertise too.

– Friends that distract them all too easily with poor behaviours and that can negatively affect training and focus.

– Or coaches that misguide them with inaccurate knowledge, guidance and advice that simply is driven around either lack of understanding or worse, selfishness about making themselves look good instead caring for the welfare and future of the athlete.

What are the solutions around harnessing these talented kids?

Firstly, do not blow smoke in or around them! Remember these young people see themselves as “proving” and doing enough at this stage in their life, as normal. Therefore often, and unless mentored properly they will not understand about failure and its correlation to resilience because they have often have never had any failures in their life as yet. As an example, scoring three goals every week in their own age group is partially pointless, although socially it does have an important place in order for them to spend time with their peer group and maintain good friendships. But from a technical and developmental point of view it could be seen as flawed. At this stage of their development, they simply need to focus on getting better and improving, because improving means experiencing failing, and failing can mean playing against far superior opposition. After all, they have “proved” themselves plenty by now in their own age group, so time for the next level in order to stretch and challenge.

So what do we mean by improving?

One big example is putting the athlete in a place where training and match days make them fail. Yes, you heard it. Stop making your sessions so clean. But you need to ensure we make them learn what failure looks and feels like and incorporate reflection for next steps ahead for them. Helping athletes retrain their mind to understand that success is not a given for them. Many times, I hear and read nonsense about learning and that it has to be nice and fluffy and often clean looking. Life is not clean and fluffy so why should we pretend to young people that sport is?  

Simply the harder we make it for them, the more chance the “talented” have of achieving success in the long term. Too much too soon has never worked let’s be honest. Now, in contrast please remember for the less talented athletes this theory simply is not going to work. They need extra support to improve their talent. No point in keep drowning them. These less able athletes are often very committed but just have not got the “x factor” that is needed for district, county or academy level so you need to be softer. In summary, think about these four aspects of the athletes you serve.

Are they:

High in talent and high in commitment?

High in talent and low in commitment?

Low in talent and high in commitment?

Low in talent and low in commitment?

Remember you really need to think about the context for the child. If they have little talent, it is unlikely they will play any sport professionally. However, you do not want to put them off a love for the sport, and for them to play recreationally in the future years of their lives. Pushing these types of kids too hard is often destined for failure. In contrast, if the “talented” athlete cannot cope with the high demands you place on them by deliberately making life hard, and they end up quitting, then at least you know early, because if they cannot cope now, they are unlikely to cope later at the higher level.

Remember not every young athlete’s dream is to play professionally, believe it or not, even though you may think they want it like you used to. Uniquely many young people I have spoken to may not see elite sport as their only way in life, and therefore having a frank discussion with talented athletes early in their adolescent career to explain very clearly to them how hard the up-and-coming journey is going to be is vital.

If the talented athlete has a high commitment level, then I see the only barrier to them succeeding is purely bad luck. This could include often the genetics they have been given from birth into adulthood or injuries they may experience that hinder that journey.

About The Author

Steve Sallis is now privileged to be working with the England under 15 National Squad for the coming season. He supports 20 Premier League and Football League Players with mental conditioning support. Steve delivers Leadership Seminars on the UEFA Pro and A’ Licence for the Scottish Football Association.

He is the author of “Educating Football” which has received national and international press coverage, which includes interviews on the iconic ‘High Performance Podcast’ (12 Million Downloads), BBC Radio 5 Live, Talk Sport, The Daily Mail podcast and Love Sport Radio. Steve has featured on a Netflix documentary which entailed supporting world class athletes in need of cognitive and technical performance support.

Find out more at: www.solutionsmindset.com/founder-profile