How good are you at assessing the potential of young players?

[Strelok]

Imo if you have watched enough football and understand a bit about it it's actually not that hard to see the footballing potential of a young player. The hard part is always their personality. Nobody probably even their closed ones would have a correct evaluation on that let alone fans who never ever even talk to them. And imo personality play a big if not deciding part in the development of a young player. That's why many of us think player X player Y would be the next big thing but they simply couldn't.

For me I've been pretty good only when it comes to tell if a young player is average. That's why you would barely find me in any thread of our youngsters ...

 

[miked99]

Firstly, most people are dreadful with youth players because they barely get chance to watch these players and have to judge based on highights. Then they're additionally dreadful because united bias means we rarely look at our own players the way that we look at those from other teams, either over- or under-estimating their abilities.

But what's also true is that, to a certain degree, its completely unknowable how people will develop anyway. So much of football is about the mental side of the game. Some players fold when they hit the big time, others thrive.

Rashford looked good at youth level, but I would never have him pegged as a first teamer at United by his 20s. Then you have players like James Wilson who seemed to glide through youth level like a rolls royce, but then when he reached adulthood just didn't have what it took.

I could've sworn that Wilson was destined for the very top. He aced it at every level, looked a cut above. Then he scored twice on his first team debut and I thought we were all set.

It goes to show the gap between the youth and reserve sides is a chasm these days and looking good at these levels is no longer the guarantee it used to be.

 

[MyOnlySolskjaer]

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.

 

[Kag]

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).

 

[Van Piorsing]

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.

 

[Von Mistelroum]

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...

 

[trevor newnham]

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

 

[Tarrou]

basically shite

 

[Big Ben Foster]

Assume they're all shite and you wont go far wrong. For every Garnacho there are 20 Elangas.

Countless numbers of youngsters we've had on the outskirts of the first team who got massively overhyped and vanished into the ether, Iqbal and Mainoo the latest. Best midfielder we've produced in the last two decades is McTominay, and the second best probably Pereira. Says it all.

Similar story with defenders. Best we've done there probably Michael Keane.

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.

 

[krazyrobus]

Dogshit, I have hope for everyone the 1st 10 or so games.

 

[Canucantona20]

Thought Obertan was going to be a legend. So not very good

 

[Canucantona20]

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.

Still think he can become a very good player. Hopefully he can come back one day

 

[Becks_VII]

Always terrible since I predicted Bellion to be the next Henry

 

[HTG]

I was sure Ousmane Dembele has more talent than Mbappe. So maybe I’m not that good.

 

[Big Ben Foster]

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.

 

[dcrompton]

Emeran and Hugill will be are starting front line next year, ahead of a Savage Iqbal midfield

 

[RedDevilRoshi]

Emeran and Hugill will be are starting front line next year, ahead of a Savage Iqbal midfield

Savage joining Utrecht too?

 

[JakeC]

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

 

[vodrake]

I was sure Ousmane Dembele has more talent than Mbappe. So maybe I’m not that good.

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...

 

[Bebestation]

Something in my CV is that I never rated Sancho in the Bundesliga.

 

[MTF]

Thought Obertan was going to be a legend. So not very good

I also thought he was going to be good.

I'm not good at assessing young player potential.

 

[Annihilate Now!]

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.

 

[dcrompton]

Savage joining Utrecht too?

We’ll buy Zidane for 90 million in January
#Iqback

 

[Big Ben Foster]

People put far too much stock in pre season games. That's the issue

This. So many hot takes today on the latest batch of youngsters based on what was essentially a preseason reserve friendly.

 

[Ace of Spades]

I don't bother with making any predictions, as it is useless.

 

[Fanta Stick]

Our youth prospects are always hyped through the roof by our fanbase. I'm sure it's probably normal though.

As for my personal judge of potential, I've never recovered from Barry Bannan, who I thought was gunna be outstanding.

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.

 

[Denis79]

A blind person would do it better than me.

 

[Big Ben Foster]

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 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.

 

[Fanta Stick]

My inbuilt bias when assessing the chances of our academy prospects has not diminished much over the years.

It's the dreamer in me.

 

[Strelok]

I was sure Ousmane Dembele has more talent than Mbappe. So maybe I’m not that good.

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.

 

[Remember the geese]

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.

 

[Tender Teacher]

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.

 

[Gordon S]

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.

 

[fergiewherearethou]

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.

 

[Lay]

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.

 

[GazTheLegend]

@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 .

 

[Bucephalus74]

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.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

The famous Harry Redknapp press conference where a West Ham fan tells him that Frank Lampard will never make it as a player (while Lampard is sitting there) is always a good reminder of the difference between armchair/internet fans judging young players versus actual football people seeing them every day in training.

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.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

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.

 

[cpresc]

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.