In this thread, people claim to be a better judge of talent than ex-football managers and players because they were right about one player not making it and because those managers and players got it wrong with a few of the hundreds of players they worked with.
Ravel Morrison | UAE 2nd Division player
- Thread starter saivet
- Start date
Agree with this. Good post
He might have had all the talent in the works but was a thug too. If I remember correctly, he got into trouble because of witness intimidation. Glad that his career has turned out to be as it has and hope that he fails at anything at he does in life. Can't stand bullies especially if they think they are the next big thing.
Have to confess that even as a non-Utd fan he's a really interesting one. He was quite obviously fantastically talented as a young player, but I think he's a classic victim of the over-financing of the youth game. Many coaches and managers have talked about the dangers of young players getting too much, too quickly. Of players driving up with 6 figure cars without ever having made a first team appearance. I've also seen the adoration from other people when a player enters a bar or nightclub. I'm a pretty level headed person with a solid upbringing and I don't know how I would have handled all the money, women throwing themselves on me, people telling me I'm amazing every few seconds etc. You are very reliant on the people close to you to help you, and if they are bad influences I'd imagine it would be almost impossible to resist.
It also demonstrates just how driven you have to be to make it. Even all that talent couldn't overcome the indiscipline, and although we praise individuals, football is still a team game. You can handle mercurial players, but not disruptive ones.
Ravel will probably always be one of those "what could have been players". Players where we never saw what their limits was. in some cases it's because of something out of their control, like Duncan Edwards, with others it might be a personality flaw that limited them like Gazza or Morrison. But it's easy to dream about what might have happened if their lives had followed a slightly different path.
It also demonstrates just how driven you have to be to make it. Even all that talent couldn't overcome the indiscipline, and although we praise individuals, football is still a team game. You can handle mercurial players, but not disruptive ones.
Ravel will probably always be one of those "what could have been players". Players where we never saw what their limits was. in some cases it's because of something out of their control, like Duncan Edwards, with others it might be a personality flaw that limited them like Gazza or Morrison. But it's easy to dream about what might have happened if their lives had followed a slightly different path.
I don't have sympathy for him as such, but then I'm not angry at him either.
I'm cringing typing this, it is what it is.
Personality/mentality/attitude - It's partly innate to me, I don't really buy blank slate theory . The same with footballing talent. You can work on both, becoming a more skillful player and also learn lessons/adjust attitude but some of it's built in already. Environment plays it's role too. Could go off into some huge tangent about free will at this point but I'm not going to.
I'm cringing typing this, it is what it is.
Personality/mentality/attitude - It's partly innate to me, I don't really buy blank slate theory . The same with footballing talent. You can work on both, becoming a more skillful player and also learn lessons/adjust attitude but some of it's built in already. Environment plays it's role too. Could go off into some huge tangent about free will at this point but I'm not going to.
Sir Alex saw Phil Jones every week and still hyped him up, just saying he can be wrong too.
Haha Phil Jones wat a meme player
If you remember he was actually really good until his injuries put him in the position of either always being injured or just back from injury.
Its frustrating how his career has turned out but noone will be as frustrated as Phil Jones and its because something out of his control.
Imagine your once promising career ending up with turning down a testimonial because you realises fans see you as a figure of mockery you because of something like injuries.
My main memory of him is that he had a feckwit mate who was treated as an ITK God on Twitter. KingJames or KingJohn or something
to be fair, he was both a feckwit and somewhat ITK
he did break Pogba joining a week before it broke elsewhere
he also told us of a few new contracts and Schlupp joining on trial - that last one would have had to have been a pretty good guess
I agree totally.
Ravel Morrison clearly wasn't as good as many thought and his career is proof of that rather than training videos of him in practice. Of course he was a top talent in our FA youth cup winning team but always felt Pogba was clearly the most likely to make the step up followed by Lingard. Ravel was arguably the most important player in that team but I was never convinced his style would translate to the first team as easy as Pogba and Lingard.
The fact that he's been to so many clubs after leaving us and still not even remotely achieving any form of significant success proves his talent wasn't as much as touted. No doubt if he was this supremely gifted player, he could have a bad attitude and still deliver on the pitch on a match day, he wouldn't be the first person to do this
You've listed a few examples but you could even go to a lower level, someone like Adel Taarabt was extremely unprofessional and didn't make the most of his talent yet even he has still made an impression at some clubs.
I don't doubt that he could have made it here if he applied himself better but i disagree with the view he had anywhere near the talent of the likes of Rooney or Giggs.
Wow just the two who made it here. You must be a prescient genius!
I have to say that senior football has no place for those number 10s who can create, score and link up play for the team...
Who are you? Ravel’s Mum?
Get a grip, there have been tonnes of wonder kids that have amounted to nothing in the professional game.
Whatever your opinion it’s a fact that Ravel is one of those many. He can’t get a game at Sheffield and other than 1 good goal under Allardyce at West Ham he’s been anonymous - at multiple clubs, under multiple managers, in multiple countries!
Everybody loves a big talent, but people confuse talent with the finished product. I dont know why that is, but we always see some posters thinking top talents are world class, when they are infact world class talents.
Ravel has gotten alot of press due to the fact that fans love talents but the finished product is a championship player.
Whatever the reason is, he didnt make it and he wont ever make it.
Its a good reminder that work ethic and professionalism is more inportant than just talent.
Ravel has gotten alot of press due to the fact that fans love talents but the finished product is a championship player.
Whatever the reason is, he didnt make it and he wont ever make it.
Its a good reminder that work ethic and professionalism is more inportant than just talent.
Even though my reply will probably be lost on you considering your waste of a post, there really aren't that many No.10's left in the game today.
He still is young enough to have a late career comeback. Just needs to find the right environment for him.
If he was as talented as claimed he'd tear apart every terrible league he's played in even without the effort and application. But he's barely ever made the impact of an Adel Tarrabt who was like Ronaldinho in the championship. Over hyped.
I disagree with the bolded. An ex-prem player (and once highly rated talent) ended up dropping down to the Welsh premier, still in his 20s, and was bang average. The talent disparity was massive and you could see in training that it was night and day, he should have cleaned up the league with his eyes closed but it wasn't the case. This is a league where only a few of the teams were professional. Even if application and effort are their in full force, you still have a load of other factors that come into play like confidence, fitness, personal problems and a myriad of other factors. That Taraabt season was quality but it was an environment set up to bring the best out of him and while I can't speak for any of his off the pitch issues, he couldn't be accused of lacking application that season.
Having said that, I don't really disagree with the sentiment of your post. The step up from youth football to senior football is a gargantuan one, and while people point to his youth performances as an indicator of his potential (and understandably so) there's a lot of players who at youth level look dead certs to be world beaters who never make it to the top flight (I know he had a decent month at West Ham but it's not much to go on). While people like Rooney and co have given him high praise, a lot of it will be down to the clear high technical level he has, whereas to make it as a top flight footballer there's a litany of different factors needed.
No, his talent was elite for youth competition. It wasn't elite for the next level, therefore is it really an elite talent? I'm saying it's not. We can disagree.
No, I didn't, and it's not the point I was trying to make. Again, talent doesn't stop being a factor once you get past the age of 14/15/16, so to me it's a bit of an irrelevant point and it seems to be the issue I'm having with some in understanding what I'm trying to say when I say his talent is not on the level of some of the names mentioned along Ravel. It's like saying your kid could have been Bill Gates if it wasn't for his bad attitude because he got an A in computer science in the 9th grade. I mean I'm being a bit tongue in cheek when I say that, but it's just to illustrate that while it's fun to speculate on potential, you really shouldn't give too much of a shit about youth competition when there's countless kids that looked amazing and never made it to the next step and kids who looked like they might not be good enough and wound up being professionals for a decade.
The excuse that his talent was so great but that his attitude and lack of professionalism along with the environment he chose to be in were the factors for his lack of success, or that his story is unique in any way, are what I've tried to argue against.
I do believe he looked incredibly talented, I did think he could be the best player to come out of that youth class and that he had a shot (although I liked Pogba better but that's just French bias), but some people on here are trying to act as if this was the most talented youngster to not make it in the history of the game, and took issue with me saying his story is one of many young players throughout history that some have never even heard of, some who showed more promise than Ravel even. And while I think it's unnecessary by now for former players to still be talking about it on television, people here have the absolute right to make these threads every year or so, and keep reminiscing, so do some of us have the right to say it's beating a dead horse, that he clearly wasn't that talented, and to move on. Now, it's made for a fun little back and forth for me, and that's a gift in these quarantine times, but I feel like I've pretty much made my point crystal clear so if you're still not sure what I'm going on about with Ravel, then we'll just have to leave it at that because I'm now dangerously close to be the one beating that dead horse.
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Is it lost on you that the club we are discussing play with a wandering number 10 or a false 9 in most games?
With all due respect to you and others, I disagree. Ravel Morrison was by far the most gifted player to ever come out of our academy in recent times. He had undeniable technique/technical ability and a football brain that was far above any youths at that time. Maybe a lot have forgotten this, but I clearly remembered whenever he played he would control the game and always had an influence on it. I’m sorry but I feel there is a lot of revisionism here about Ravel undoubtably talent due to the fact that he did not make it as a professional. It feels like maybe some of you just wanna be proved right and joined in on the bandwagon that he maybe wasn’t as talented as he was touted.
But for me and a lot of others here, it was apparent that he wasn’t just some youth kid that appeared like a world beater only to fail to step up when put against real men and professionals of the game. That is totally untrue. Are you being ignorant just to support your argument or are you just refusing to mention/purposely leaving out his performances for Birmingham, West Ham and QPR? He did well in those teams against professional men. Often running the show in centre midfield at only 19 years of age. He wasn’t crap like you said he was. He wouldn’t have started for their first team on a regular basis if he was. He was a mainstay in the Birmingham/QPR team and a squad player for the West Ham one. He didn’t fail to step up, he actually did step up. So much so that he got called up for England’s U21s. He played with Zaha and many others with England. He just did not kick on from there.
The reason it didn’t work out past that stage had nothing to do with his talent. Period. He would’ve made it if he wanted to. It WAS his lack of professionalism. He simply didn’t cared enough about being a professional footballer and had no desire of using his talent to be the very best. He would repeatedly not show up for training and constantly got into trouble outside of football. He took it all for granted and ultimately it showed as he fell out with all his coaches. I am convinced if he had kicked on, he could have at least played for a top 6 club.
Regardless, I accept that’s he’s crap now. Compared to the player he is now to the player he was then, huge difference. And it’s been like that for years now. I couldn’t care less what happens to him or if he could still turn it around. Its unlikely as years of no proper training, that technical ability and football brain is definitely gone. He should’ve been in his prime now, but he looks worse than when he was a teen. It is just the revisionism of him here is what I cannot agree on. He was an elite talent that simply failed to kick on due to his own lack of interest to the game itself. Not because he wasn’t really elite. That’s laughable tbh.
If his Computer Teacher was telling me he was exceptionally talented and a few other massively experienced world class professionals were saying he was the best they'd ever seen at 16. Then yeah I'd be expecting great things from him. I'm not sure why you're resistant to some expert first hand feedback from world class players and some top class managers and coaches. But each to their own, you think you know better, good on ya.
Ravel was ruined by his behaviour, lord knows what goes on in his head. If you don't work with the gifts you're given then you're not going to succeed. Plenty of people are exceptionally talented, but never achieve their potential, but that doesn't mean the talent was never there.
This is the concept that the hindsight brigade aren't recognising.
There is a reason why the academy literally says on the walls that hard work beats talent if talent doesn't work hard.
The standards it takes to be a professional footballer, even a 'crap' one are so high so players have to be dedicated and focused , and football is a game with multiple paths to winning so players need to be determined and to concentrate.
As a footballer you can't really afford to miss a lot of training and football experience from 16 to 21 because of skiving, suspensions and legal or discipline reasons. He did all that and was still the best player in one of our best ever youth sides.. You just can't get away with it in the men's game, the margins are too fine.
The fact Sir Alex still didn't want to give up on him at 18 and we wanted to renew his contract after everything, speaks volumes about the level of his potential even then if his mental side could improve. It was only when Ravel wanted 50k a week to stay that we realised he was lost. We weren't paying that and he wasn't staying so he had to go.
Ravel is a weird one for me. Despite his off-field troubles and cocky persona, he still was remarkably mature on the football pitch. His skill compilation gained him a YouTube following but it was his fotballing brain that impressed me the most. He carried the ball extremely well at a high pace and had a great eye for a pass. Still not sure if I would place him above Rossi at the top of our youth chart though, Rossi was insane. You could see that Pogba was very talented but at the same time I was wary of hyping him due to him having better physical attributes than pretty much anyone else that age. In hindsight he was our biggest talent at that age though.
I don't think you can blame the money in youth football or the hype machine for Ravel's demise though, nor is the comparison with supreme talents-turned-party animals like Ronaldinho valid. Ravel wasn't a kid who just thought he had made it already, he just wanted to be a gangster. Witness intimidation, domestic disturbance and just in general trouble with the law enforcement. My guess is that off-field persona contributed more to his obscene contract demands that led Sir Alex to give up on him, rather than som arrogant kid who thought he had made it already.
I don't think you can blame the money in youth football or the hype machine for Ravel's demise though, nor is the comparison with supreme talents-turned-party animals like Ronaldinho valid. Ravel wasn't a kid who just thought he had made it already, he just wanted to be a gangster. Witness intimidation, domestic disturbance and just in general trouble with the law enforcement. My guess is that off-field persona contributed more to his obscene contract demands that led Sir Alex to give up on him, rather than som arrogant kid who thought he had made it already.
He took advice from his agent. His agent probably wasn't the best of people to advise him, but I know he got him out of a few issues. I doubt Ravel really cared if he was on 20 or 50k a week, but his agent certainly had a vested interest in getting the best deal for him, regardless of if it were in his clients best interests.
Talent only gets you so far.
In Croatia, Niko Kranjčar was considered bigger talent than Luka Modrić (and rigthfully so) but Modrić worked harder and despite being poorer and not having everything Kranjčar had, he made much more of his talent.
Kranjčar was so dominant and ahead of his peers, that kid from my hometown who used to play with him in Dinamo U-14 said that while everyone else were working corner routines and kicks in normal way, Kranjčar was taking corner kicks with rabona style since normal was to easy for him. But his love for food and drink took too much out of him, and while he's had nice career, he should've been best ever Croatia player based on stories and ability he had as a youngster.
In Croatia, Niko Kranjčar was considered bigger talent than Luka Modrić (and rigthfully so) but Modrić worked harder and despite being poorer and not having everything Kranjčar had, he made much more of his talent.
Kranjčar was so dominant and ahead of his peers, that kid from my hometown who used to play with him in Dinamo U-14 said that while everyone else were working corner routines and kicks in normal way, Kranjčar was taking corner kicks with rabona style since normal was to easy for him. But his love for food and drink took too much out of him, and while he's had nice career, he should've been best ever Croatia player based on stories and ability he had as a youngster.
Because the experts are wrong all of the time and what you show at a younger age often means feck all when it's against youth competition or what you do in training, which is where mostly all that praise was coming from. I've seen some world class talents look like world-beaters in training and never being able to step past that point across numerous sports. Do I think they're not talented? No, I think they're extremely talented, but they don't have the talent for the professional side of the game where you deal with far more than just a ball and 21 other players.
Hell, I was wrong about Ravel, I thought he was going to be a stud. I thought the same about Kakuta, Ben Arfa, Bojan, Balotelli, Pato and those are all players who have done far more than Ravel ever could. I'm not taking any joy in saying any of this because you always want to see youth talent realize itself on the biggest stage.
So it's not that I think I know better, it's that I'm not married to my initial (and hopeful) opinion on a talented young player. Some get found out after a good start, some that could make that key decision in the game in 1 second, can't adjust to do it in half the time at the professional level, some adjust better on the pro side, and some sink because it's no longer as easy as it always was for them prior. You know all of that, I'm sure, but why doesn't it apply for a guy like Ravel and it's solely about him being good enough but choosing not to be? I think he's given it a fair shot even despite his mentality. At the end of the day, that talent didn't translate.
Right now, I'm turning out to be wrong about Ousmane Dembele, who I was rooting for when he got to Dortmund from Rennes after a good first season, for me he's an elite talent in the way some of you portray Ravel.
So then, after a great season in Bundesliga, he misses practice to force a move to his dream club, gets there and doesn't show up for practice, actually lies about being sick to not go to practice, shows up late when he does decide to come, stays up late eating junk food playing video games with his boys, he's a complete mess. Then he gets called up despite being late for training the day before, and does this against Tottenham. Last season, despite all the off-the-field incidents, he gets on the field and scores very important goals for Barcelona, despite not being a great fit there and showing a lot of rawness and stupid mistakes.
He's not out there intimidating witnesses and trying to be a thug, still his issues are just as detrimental to maximizing his talent, especially as it's leading to injuries taking him even further away from his development but because he's a far superior talent to Ravel on the professional level, he can do things like that when he does get on the field. And no matter how much of a bad kid Ravel might have been, he's still put in enough time on the practice field and jumping from club to club to have had more than a month or two of solid football in 8-9 years of professional football. I'm sorry, but no way that's acceptable for a talent of the level you're trying to convey.
See the bolded bit.
Yeah because there’s no chance he looks back and cringes at his past. Nobody ever does that.
It’s like you want to disregard the most reliable sources of information.
I was one of the best XC/Distance runners in the country between the ages of 10-15. A National standard Athlete.
I was outperforming my peer group, anyone that saw me race or win an event, could comment that I was a probable future Olympian. (Nobody has directly, or would).
The fact that I didn’t become one doesn’t mean everyone would have been wrong.
Final outcomes are not bound to talent.
"Hope that he fails at anything he does in life" followed in next sentence by "Can't stand bullies"!?!?!?!
Who's saying he turned out a world class player?
Simply put if you don't train and fall out with coaches and managers at the club you're supposed to play for. Or simply vanish for weeks on end, then you're not going to be playing regular game time.
People agreeing with the likes of Paul Scholes, Rio Ferdinand, Rene Meulensteen, Sir Alex to name but a few, doesn't mean they don;t know what they're talking about.
Seems you're a tad hurt that he didn't live up to your expectations.
But yet they signed him after a trial knowing his reputation, so clearly he does have a lot of natural talent. He just doesn't have the work ethic/drive/motivation to be a top footballer. He obviously has issues that just can't allow him to reach his full potential.
The fact that people like Rooney says he's the best young player he's ever seen says something. The way they gush about him he was clearly insanely talented, but he just lost focus. Unfortunately not all genius can reach their best, which is why people with huge drive like Ronaldo end up being better in the long run.
Old article from 2011
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2011/feb/19/ravel-morrison-manchester-united
Interesting that Neville and Ferdinand both offered to have him live with them - Im guessing that was something they wouldnt have done for the average youth team player
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2011/feb/19/ravel-morrison-manchester-united
Interesting that Neville and Ferdinand both offered to have him live with them - Im guessing that was something they wouldnt have done for the average youth team player
His talent was exceptional. Just another example of a player who had talent but failed to make the step up, the annoying thing is that it was not because of something out of his hands. All self inflicted.
I'm not saying he wasn't one of the most talented in the country my issue is people saying making him seem like an elite level type of talent like Rooney and Giggs based on quotes. His off the field antics clearly hindered him from achieving his full potential but his talent couldn't have been as much as thought if he still couldn't force a breakthrough at any meaningful club.
Balotelli, Cassano and Ben Arfa are examples of talented players who were extremely unprofessional but due to their insane natural ability were still able to have a meaningful impact at high levels of football. These are elite talents not Ravel.
Morrison is just another in the long list of players like Kakuta, Januzaj, Ibe etc who were extremly good at youth level but unable to translate that to senior football.
He's's clearly a unique case otherwise he wouldn't get brought up as much as he does. It's evident that from all accounts his natural talent was not just exciting or impressive but absurdly good. It's different from that speedy CF we had awhile back who was smashing it at the youth levels. Players with awe inspiring technique always instill a greater amount of faith and interest in others.I'm not talking about James Milners coming through, I'm talking about players that displayed an ability to look like a man playing amongst boys in their category and above, doing outrageous things in training against the pros, etc. There are countless examples of guys like Ravel that drop off at different steps of their youth career or soon after, whether it's for footballing, health, personal, or mental reasons.
He's not a Cryuff, Gazzas, R10 type of talent that slipped through, otherwise he would have made it, pure and simple. Ronaldinho was a party animal, he wasn't a model professional by any stretch and it eventually caught up to him, but he still pierced through because he was that talented and conquered the world for a moment, that's not even remotely close to what happened with Ravel, hell Hatem Ben Arfa with his horrible attitude, terrible professionalism, and complete lack of desire to use his brain when he's shown in the past he could do it all when he wanted (dribbling, passing, creating) still made more waves than Ravel, and he would have had no problem nutmegging Vidic either.
You can have plenty of former players who are going to talk about a kid nutmegging them or taking the piss out of them in training, that's not any kind of distinction to really take anything from. It's normal even for a manager or seasoned players to get excited about a talent coming through, especially when he stands out from the rest, but I don't care whether it's SAF, Vidic, or Rio talking about it, at the end of the day they got too hyped on a kid that hadn't proven himself at the professional level and were disappointed by it. No one likes to see wasted talent, but it doesn't mean they're some infallible talent evaluators or that we should still be hearing about this kid every year. I have to feel for him in a sense, he has to hear about this on a weekly basis it feels like at times.
What's the point of reminding him constantly of his failures and what he could have been? I wish they'd just move on, his story is not unique or special, he's just a kid who had all the talents and didn't make it to the next step, a dime a dozen kind of story in football.
Defining talent is difficult and becomes vague if we're bringing the mental aspects into it. But it's entirely possible that Ravel was talented enough and more talented than Pogba and still failed. Pogba ending up a top player and Ravel wasting his career doesn't necessarily mean Pogba was the more talented of the two kids.
He scored loads of goals but I don't think he was heralded as a Maradona level player. But I may be mistaken.
Balotelli was never an elite talent. Nothing about him was elite except for the hype
This is a thread where people are comparing Ravel Morrison to Ronaldinho
You’re basing Balotelli’s talent off his performances playing top flight football. If we’re basing Morrison’s off youth football, it’s a lopsided system. Unless you watched a lot off Balotelli at 16.
There's no hard and fast rule like that. Luis Figo could have ended up being a woeful player if he didn't bother trying to not be one. Same goes for Danny Higginbnottom. Where you end up isn't necessarily indicative of the tools you had at your disposal.
By some important accounts Ravel had an absurd amount at his disposal. And wasted. You feel he didn't have all that much to begin with given it didn't amount to enough. But like I said, there's no one rule. This isn't a logic that can be blanket applied.
They're probably just taking about natural ability if you look closely. And nobody, not even those who rated him, felt he had Ronaldhinio level of talent.
Balotelli always confused me. Never understood the reason for hype.
Ive added a bit. You’re rating Balotelli off performances in top flight football, and Morrison in youth football. From all accounts Balotelli was phenomenal as a kid. It’s such a different ball game, people who look like donkeys in the fast pace of top flight football, can look like Messi in youth football. Leon Britton, a player I love and rate highly, but is probably not rated particularly by the footballing world, was purchased by West Ham at the age of 16 for £400,000 in 1998. He was the most expensive 16 year old of all time at that point. Judging players potential at that age is almost impossible.
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