Yeah and that’s what I’ve said, his natural talent is obvious, but some have elevated this talent to the upper echelons of Ronaldinho and players of that ilk.
Technical talent is technical talent. Didn't see it ever with Balotelli. At least not that of a top player. Some players look better due to being ahead in their physical development. That's different from those whose technical ability is genuinely elite.
This is a hugely important thing. I get the feeling he saw football as a way to have some fun but never truly cared about being the best he could be from a young age. He's admitted skipping training for no good reason and from his time at some of his other clubs it seems like he's not the type of player to react well to adversory or try to prove a manager wrong, he'd rather sulk and just not turn up to training.
That just doesn’t mean much. To apply your skills when playing with grown ups is a different thing and so many talented players failed to make the stop up. So did he, paired with a poor attitude
Yes but it doesn't mean he wasn't incredibly talented and unique in that regard.
Was just about to post something like this in response to @balaks .
Rubbish. Those players actually got played. Ravel doesn't get put on the pitch regardless of how he plays. That tells you there's likely a bigger problem behind the scenes than those players.
The real issue was that Ravel just never worked on the parts of the game that could be improved on like his fitness and technique. Lack of elite athleticism never hindered the likes of Scholes and Xavi from reaching the pinnacle of the game.
Stop dreaming.
How do you know though? If he didn't try he may have ended up like Quaresma because his talent may be too high not to make it pro at a good level so there is no way you can say he would of been woeful if he didn't try to be anything else. Plenty of players didn't take it that seriously. Zlatan said he only tried to do skills in every match because he was a street baller and that's how he grew up playing but Juve still signed him. While at Juve, his manager told him " I need more goals from you" and thats when he started to become a phenom. Balotelli pissed about. One game Materrazzi said Balotelli told him "I am going to play badly today" etc
And how do you guys know Ravel "had elite talent only for youth level?". He was by all accounts absurdly talented and didn't build on what he had. Had he done so he'd most likely have been a great player. It's hardly as if honing one's skills year in year out is an alien concept. It's what you should be doing and what everybody does.
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.
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Very accurate chronology of Ando's career to be fair
Or it suggests he had elite talent compared to other footballers but made feck all of it.
Not what I said at all which is rather ironic. My point was not about having a good career. It's about demonstrating talent at some respectable level. There are plenty of players who have talent but never won stuff or played at top teams because they werent serious enough but still showed some talent at a decent level. Quaresma Taarabt etc. Morrison literally showed hardly anything at any level above youth level or the Mexican league which is strange for someone with supposed elite level talent to be so low. Even players like Taraabt who was fat and out of shape was able to tear up the championship which Morrison was not capable of. Bestie was a pisshead, Adebayor had zero application in training, Socrates used to drink, smoke and hated training yet they all demonstrated their talents at a high level. What's Ravels reasoning for being so ordinary? He does sign for clubs so must still get a kick out of playing
