I was convinced Angel Gomes was going to make it huge for us, he can still have a great career and seems he had another good showing at the International youth level. But at the time, I thought we had a Foden-level talent.
How good are you at assessing the potential of young players?
- Thread starter NicolaSacco
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Rubbish. I thought Adnan Januzaj would be one of the world’s best players. Don’t listen to me when it comes to this (feel free to ignore the rest, too).
There was one cheeky caftard on here, few good years ago, who predicted Jadon Sancho having big future ahead on Youtube, Insta & Tik Tok.
Don't forget to subscribe and smash that like button, if you'll find him.
Don't forget to subscribe and smash that like button, if you'll find him.
I remember seeing a young man by the name of John Cena perform a 'rapper' gimmick on a random TV Halloween episode. I said right then and there that he should do that all the time and predicted he'd be huge! That's when I knew I was the ultimate judge of young talent.
Got a few wrong in football though...
Got a few wrong in football though...
I rememberJohn Curtiswho broke into the 1st team after a stellar season for the Reserves, he played against Arsenal and he was dreadful, too slow, never played again and was moved on, never to be heard of again. Wilson was another who was outstanding in the Reserves, picked up an ACL and was never the same. Ravel Morrison was arguably the best player I have seen since Bestie. A mate of mine scored a hat trick for England under 16s against Holland, was released by Colchester at 18. The future is totally unpredictable for the majority of young players
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basically shite
It's always been that way on the Caf. If you look back over the years at threads predicting our future first team squads, you'll see names like Garner, Laird, Wilson, Thorpe, Fosu-Mensah, Tunnicliffe, Petrucci, King, Eikrem, Drinkwater, Norwood, Simpson, Eckersley, etc etc... really the list goes on and on.
Every semi-promising Academy product is touted as the next big thing here and when they're inevitably sold there's nothing but outrage for a few days, before posters move on to the next young player who will surely be part of our starting XI for years to come.
Funny enough, a lot of the ones who do make it (like McTominay) seemingly come out of nowhere with little to no Caf hype around them.
Dogshit, I have hope for everyone the 1st 10 or so games.
Thought Obertan was going to be a legend. So not very good
Still think he can become a very good player. Hopefully he can come back one day
Always terrible since I predicted Bellion to be the next Henry 
I was sure Ousmane Dembele has more talent than Mbappe. So maybe I’m not that good.
Wasn't his issue injuries more than anything else? Can't predict that. The talent was always there though.
Emeran and Hugill will be are starting front line next year, ahead of a Savage Iqbal midfield
Savage joining Utrecht too?
I'd say I'm better than average. Even years ago watching the toulon tournament i was tight about a couple of lads. I did think however iorfa was going to be the next Rio Ferdinand
I thought Lucas Moura was going to be as good as Neymar, so I'm in the same boat. Admittably, that one may have had to do with the fact it looked like United were about to sign Moura at the time...
Something in my CV is that I never rated Sancho in the Bundesliga.
I also thought he was going to be good.I'm not good at assessing young player potential.
Pretty good. I pretty much assume every single youngster of ours isn't good enough to play for a United unless it's blindingly obvious... And 99% of the time I'm proven right.
This. So many hot takes today on the latest batch of youngsters based on what was essentially a preseason reserve friendly.
I don't bother with making any predictions, as it is useless.
You are not the only one.
Everyone who watched him on MUTV run our reserves midfield ragged for Villa all those years ago was clamouring for his signature.
A blind person would do it better than me.
This is in all honesty the most realistic approach. It's not a slight against our academy (which has a great record of developing top-flight and international-level players) - the reality is that the bar to make it at United (even a relatively poor United) is really, really, really, really high.
My inbuilt bias when assessing the chances of our academy prospects has not diminished much over the years.
It's the dreamer in me.
It's the dreamer in me.
Imo you're not wrong he has as pure footballing ability speaking. Problem is mentally he's so shit. That's why he has never reached his full potential.
Tbh I didn't really rate Mbappe back then until his first WC I think. I was of the opinion he's just a very fast LW. Only then watching him I'd realise how crazily fast he is and especially how mature he already was. Imo people usually think Mbappe is great just because he's crazily fast. But imo it's actually his maturity and footballing brain made him that good. Traore is also crazily fast and imo even a better dribbler. But this guy unfortunately has no brain.
I genuinely believe that I'm pretty good at it. Nobody gets a 100% success rate obviously, however some of the ones you get wrong are sometimes down to factors that we from the outside aren't really privy too.
How can we even assess ourselves on this?
The "potential" of a young player that fans are able to see and assess is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the full picture of that player's potential. Said picture would also include many mental factors like ambition, maturity and work rate, alongside various physical characteristics such as durability and long term muscle development.
For sure, we can merrily evaluate the handful of technical and physical characteristics which are visible to us. However, if a player we rated highly doesn't then develop into the star we thought they might become, that isn't necessarily because we judged said visible characteristics poorly.
The "potential" of a young player that fans are able to see and assess is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the full picture of that player's potential. Said picture would also include many mental factors like ambition, maturity and work rate, alongside various physical characteristics such as durability and long term muscle development.
For sure, we can merrily evaluate the handful of technical and physical characteristics which are visible to us. However, if a player we rated highly doesn't then develop into the star we thought they might become, that isn't necessarily because we judged said visible characteristics poorly.
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It is so so hard to see who might have what it takes from the outside.
I would never imagine that a player like Scott Mctominay would get so many starts in our midfield.
Lingard didn`t look like a special talent either.
Angel Gomes looked special from an early age and i was atleast 95% sure he would play for our first team one day.
These examples makes me unsure of everything regarding this. Only young players right now that i feel have the talent to be regulars for our first team one day is Mainoo, Amad, and Hannibal. But it might as well be Charlie Savage that makes a career here for all i know.
I would never imagine that a player like Scott Mctominay would get so many starts in our midfield.
Lingard didn`t look like a special talent either.
Angel Gomes looked special from an early age and i was atleast 95% sure he would play for our first team one day.
These examples makes me unsure of everything regarding this. Only young players right now that i feel have the talent to be regulars for our first team one day is Mainoo, Amad, and Hannibal. But it might as well be Charlie Savage that makes a career here for all i know.
I am very good at spotting talent, I was 100% sure that Ronaldo and Messi were going places when I first saw them at around 18. Well...me and 99% of the World football fans.
I used underrate and overrate them but not as much nowadays. I don't have a lot of hope for the youth players because the step up seems enormous and its quite rare for a world class talent to appear. I envision most will play 10 games before disappearing and ending up at Fulham or Wolves in a couple of years.
@NicolaSacco I like this thread.
How good am I? As people have said, that Harry Redknapp interview was brutally true, fans don't get to see anything behind the scenes so it's hard to know how good a youth player is. So all we get is the pro games to judge, so the few games we see are IT.
However I remember seeing Xavi play us in 1999 and thinking after 1 game that kid was gonna be special. And then Fabregas against us for Arsenal and being sad because I just knew he'd be an incredible player. But that's confirmation bias: I don't know how many players I've gotten "wrong" in that way of thinking.
But I've not had that feeling about any of the players that made their debut for us, like Chong, Iqbal, etc. Even Januzaj I always felt in the back of my mind he would be too slow to make it: with Ronaldo and his debut he was tall and FAST, so even if you don't have the skill you can hurt people... And he had the skill too.
The one modern player I've felt has that sort of weird ability is Billy Gilmour but Chelsea got rid of him so maybe my radar was off on that one after all .
How good am I? As people have said, that Harry Redknapp interview was brutally true, fans don't get to see anything behind the scenes so it's hard to know how good a youth player is. So all we get is the pro games to judge, so the few games we see are IT.
However I remember seeing Xavi play us in 1999 and thinking after 1 game that kid was gonna be special. And then Fabregas against us for Arsenal and being sad because I just knew he'd be an incredible player. But that's confirmation bias: I don't know how many players I've gotten "wrong" in that way of thinking.
But I've not had that feeling about any of the players that made their debut for us, like Chong, Iqbal, etc. Even Januzaj I always felt in the back of my mind he would be too slow to make it: with Ronaldo and his debut he was tall and FAST, so even if you don't have the skill you can hurt people... And he had the skill too.
The one modern player I've felt has that sort of weird ability is Billy Gilmour but Chelsea got rid of him so maybe my radar was off on that one after all .
Answering as an Arsenal supporter (first post here, but I've been lurking for a while, because I enjoy good football conversation and different perspectives, and this place seems far more grounded in reality than RAWK or Fighting Cock).
Outside of players you can count on your fingers (for us, Cesc), there's just no way of telling who'll make it. Who stands up to the physical rigors of adult football, and who gets injuries (looking at you Wilshere and ESR)? Who gets a chance and who seizes it when it comes? I'm not very familiar with the current United youth system, but five years ago, if you told me there was going to be a Hale End grad who Transfermarkt would rate as the fourth most valuable player in the world, I'd never have guessed Saka. But Maitland-Niles resisted position switches that would have got him on the pitch, and stagnated. Reiss Nelson got quiet whenever he got a chance. Saka got on the pitch at 17 playing out of position at wing-back versus City because Kolasinac either had a niggling injury or just didn't feel it in what was going to be a bad loss. And he's seized every opportunity ever since. Took his chance.
So no. There is no way of projecting youngsters unless they're Cesc level. Every talented youngster who was the best youth footballer anyone in his home town had ever seen has to go through the gauntlet of adjusting to fully adult football, dodge the injuries, and then still get a chance and seize it.
Outside of players you can count on your fingers (for us, Cesc), there's just no way of telling who'll make it. Who stands up to the physical rigors of adult football, and who gets injuries (looking at you Wilshere and ESR)? Who gets a chance and who seizes it when it comes? I'm not very familiar with the current United youth system, but five years ago, if you told me there was going to be a Hale End grad who Transfermarkt would rate as the fourth most valuable player in the world, I'd never have guessed Saka. But Maitland-Niles resisted position switches that would have got him on the pitch, and stagnated. Reiss Nelson got quiet whenever he got a chance. Saka got on the pitch at 17 playing out of position at wing-back versus City because Kolasinac either had a niggling injury or just didn't feel it in what was going to be a bad loss. And he's seized every opportunity ever since. Took his chance.
So no. There is no way of projecting youngsters unless they're Cesc level. Every talented youngster who was the best youth footballer anyone in his home town had ever seen has to go through the gauntlet of adjusting to fully adult football, dodge the injuries, and then still get a chance and seize it.
That’s been held up for all the right reasons. But also it’s an education in ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’.
Lampard was genuinely terrible in his first appearances and the fans in that room were right. But Redknapp was more right.
But I doubt that he’d have got as much rope had he not been related to the manager.
It’s really complicated. Darren Ferguson got waaaay too many chances at United but turned into a solid footballer. But Ferguson showed as much faith in Fletcher, Brown and OShea so it’s a wash.
Theres a balance in the middle. Fans that watch reserve football don’t know shit as an individual, but groupthink is valuable.
I think Januzaj would have been a £50m player under Fergie. Everyone could see it. Ravel may have been a better player under Pep or Bielsa. It’s talent vs teacher vs circumstance.
The fan problem is removing all context. I’m guilty of it as much as anyone.
Might get a delete or warning for saying it… but Foden and Greenwood in Iceland was indicative.
I don’t think it was two lads working shit out. I don’t think Foden and Greenwood got the same messages when getting home.
One is now a treble winner. The other is listless.
Cultural and emotional education is so valuable for this latest crop of 17 year old millionaires.
Foden remains a very weird dude, but he seems to be professionally perfect.
I don’t think it was two lads working shit out. I don’t think Foden and Greenwood got the same messages when getting home.
One is now a treble winner. The other is listless.
Cultural and emotional education is so valuable for this latest crop of 17 year old millionaires.
Foden remains a very weird dude, but he seems to be professionally perfect.
When CR7 first signed for Utd I'd only seen that friendly he played in against us for Sporting Lisbon - I told my mate then we've just signed the future best player in the world (humorously he laughed me off and said Ji Sung Park would be our player of the season haha). I also through the same when I first saw the other Ronaldo play for PSV. Maybe it's just a "Ronaldo" thing haha.
I do however feel the same way about Kolo Muani - I think he's going to be absolutely world class within 2 years.
I do however feel the same way about Kolo Muani - I think he's going to be absolutely world class within 2 years.
Thanks man!
It’s pretty impressive that you mention Xavi. His style of play doesn’t exactly lend itself to early recognition of talent. Which probably brings another question: what position and style of play are easiest to recognise greatness in early? I mean, no one should get too much Kudos for recognising that a 17 yr old Michael Owen would be as good as he was. But a 17 yr old Scholes? Modric? It’s nowhere near as clear cut.
We as football fans overrate massively players who operate the ball in aesthetic way. It's far easier to fall into that trap in for example preseason games. People tend to mix this with high technical skills and assume this guy will make it on serious level. I did that mistake with Januzaj, I was absolutely convinced he will kill it. It even seemed this might be the case for a while.
I believe I am better at seeing failures actually. I predicted Pogba and Sabitzer to be failures, next prediction is Antony. But I also thought Sancho will be a big hit under Ten Hag so yeah. And Welbeck in SAF era, he seemed like he could reach top level but somehow it never clicked.
I believe I am better at seeing failures actually. I predicted Pogba and Sabitzer to be failures, next prediction is Antony. But I also thought Sancho will be a big hit under Ten Hag so yeah. And Welbeck in SAF era, he seemed like he could reach top level but somehow it never clicked.