Ravel Morrison | Derby player

UnrelatedPsuedo

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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.
I was one unequivocally one of the best runners in the country. For a long while. I had talent. It was never realised.

I could have been Kipchoge talented but getting on the happy-sauce, acid and vagina wagon to the extent I did would still have set fire to even that obscene level of talent.

It’s not black and white mate. If players that played and trained with Ronaldo and Rooney, describe Ravel as the best talent they saw, just believe them. What’s the downside?
 

RUCK4444

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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.
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.

Which is ridiculous.

Natural ability is just one tool of many that players at the top level require. As you said without desire and dedication it will only get you so far.

If you can’t cut it at the top you may as well take that talent and do keepy uppies for cash on the high street, because for the most part that’s all it’s worth without the rest of the tool kit.
 

amolbhatia50k

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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.
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.
 

Cascarino

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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.
You are right that physical development can often eschew judgements of players at youth football. Those who rely on strength and speed are often ahead of their perhaps more technically talented peers and then end up not being able to make the cut when they get into the world of adult football. Technical ability isn't immune from this either though, someone who can look technically perfect can easily be undone by the pace of top flight football. That's without getting into what constitutes technical ability.

Not related to you but a lot of people are mentioning in this thread that because player x said this it means that. I remember being told by both players and coaches, some who had been in the game for 30+ years that Dale Jennings was a dead cert to be a superstar. Of course getting predictions wrong doesn't mean that they're not incredibly well educated on football matters, it just means they're not infallible and their word shouldn't be taken as gospel.
 

SAFMUTD

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You all talking about Morrison as if he was the great Greenwood himself.
 

saivet

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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.
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.

I think if things didn't go sour at West Ham with the alleged pressure from Big Sam to take on his agent, things may have turned out very differently.

All that said, I think ultimately his biggest downfall is he just isn't cut out to be a footballer, what other top young talents were skipping training before they had even appeared in the first team?
 

Escobar

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The limited games he played at the first team he had had outshone Pogba.
No need to hype him up, if he was not a massive knob he would be up there with Pogba.
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
 

amolbhatia50k

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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.
 

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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.
A great right winger.

 

Raees

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There’s plenty of players who looked way ahead of the their peers at a young age group but as they got closer to first team football or even earlier - their progress stagnates despite them being very professional.. could just be a case of everyone catching up or the fact that some element of their game made them look ahead of the curve but once they played against a certain level of player their attributes didn’t stand out as much.

Personally speaking I remember Ravel, Pogba and Sterling playing in a Liverpool United game just as a random example and for me it was always quite easy to see Pogba was the certainty to make it at highest level, Sterling also looked brilliant albeit you are never too sure if a player that small will be trusted by the respective coaches to be given a shot whereas Ravel to me looked very intelligent but he didn’t blow me away like United fans used to hype him at the time.

He had that famous gif where he pulled off that crazy dribble so he clearly had some talent but athleticism wise he wasn’t prodigious.. no explosive pace, not that strong and his agility was good but on a consistent basis it wasn’t insanely good.

He was the type of player who looked ahead of his peer group due to his football brain relative to their stages of development but in the professional adult game, every player has a good football brain to a certain degree. The fact he never honed this or the fact it wasn’t that exceptional compared to a fully fledged CM at EPL level is why he has never broke through despite his so called once in a generation talent.

Someone mentioned Tarrabt or Arfa and they make good points. Reason why people gambled on these morons and to some extent they could mix it in elite circles and earn regular game time was they had genuinely high level talent in terms of their ball carrying but it was mixed with a natural athleticism that meant their skills could be effective against professional grown adult players. Ravel was more intelligent than these guys but outside of his passing, was there really enough about his game to allow him to be a lazy dick and still make professionals look silly at the highest level? No and the lack of natural elite athleticism was probably the biggest reason why he’s never made it.
 

Yagami

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You're on a Manchester Utd forum, in a thread about a player that was considered as one of the Academy's brightest prospects. People are following his "career" beyond his failure at Manchester. There's nothing strange or "obsessive" about this - the only strange thing is you coming into this thread lecturing people that probably had some attachment to him as a youth player or who are just genuinely interested in how his career pans out.
Was just about to post something like this in response to @balaks .

I really don't get why anyone finds it strange. Opposition or United fans alike. He was one of our most gifted youth prospects ever, and we've had quite a few. Of course there is going to be a group of United fans who will still take interest in him and his career. Epsecially those who watched him for us.

Hell, even Gary Neville is still talking about him.
 

roonster09

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Personally speaking I remember Ravel, Pogba and Sterling playing in a Liverpool United game just as a random example and for me it was always quite easy to see Pogba was the certainty to make it at highest level, Sterling also looked brilliant albeit you are never too sure if a player that small will be trusted by the respective coaches to be given a shot whereas Ravel to me looked very intelligent but he didn’t blow me away like United fans used to hype him at the time.
That was the game where Morrison made Pogba and Sterling look like just regular talents, IIRC it was FA youth cup semi finals where Pogba was sent off.
 

RooneyLegend

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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.
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.
 

Raees

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That was the game where Morrison made Pogba and Sterling look like just regular talents, IIRC it was FA youth cup semi finals where Pogba was sent off.
Morrison had a great game but you have to read between the lines when predicting which players will have what it takes to make it into professional football at the highest level and yes all three were destined to make it.. no doubt that Ravel should have made it if he had his head screwed on, but exceptionally gifted footballers (blessed with technique and athleticism) will generally still have a good chance of making it into the men's game even if they're screw ups. Ravel was technically a gifted player, and football IQ wise ahead of his peers as that game illustrated (his football IQ at that stage was superior to Pogba for instance) but athletically he wasn't anything special by men's game standard.

Someone like Gascoigne just to compare by way of example, technically superior to a Ravel but also athletically a very impressive player in his younger years... great engine, strong as an ox and great burst of pace too.. so despite being mentally very flawed, as an overall package had enough about him to still make an impact and hence why managers were willing to gamble on him.
 

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I am very glad that the lockdown has made media investigate the Ravel Morrison issue. It is blatantly obvious when one watches even one minute of him that he has a talent that NO ONE at United since George Best has had. Talent is a seldom defined term - he certainly has (had?) the requisite physicality and technique to star for United. Many players had that but what Ravel had that Best had and no one else has today bar Messi, Neymar and Ronaldinho was the preternaturally quick football brain, the same insouciance and belief that he could try things that others wouldn't dare.

A lot of the media has fallen over themselves saying that he wasn't a Gary Neville and what you need to make it is be Gary Neville. Gary Neville is a good pundit, but was at best (he would probably admit it) a marginal United footballer in those times, holding down a place because he was an Academy product. The world closed most of its footballing doors to Gary Neville but he took the one open one, of application, and ran through it. This is seen to be his great personal success (and Ravel's great personal failing). The uncomfortable truth and what has been a side note is that Gary Neville's achievement was not application just luck - his supportive family background and personal makeup and, I daresay, race opened as many non-footballing doors as Ravel's equivalents closed for him.

Geniuses like Ravel (and to a lesser extent Cantona, Ronaldinho and Neymar) don't see the world the same way as the Gary Nevilles of the world do. For them, making it by the time you are 19 is not necessary because they know they have the talent to make it later too. Teams on many continents, most recently one in the Premier League, have seen that talent and given Ravel trials, all of which he has grown tired of. The reason he failed those is also fundamentally tied to his genius. Messi couldn't play in the Championship because his teammates wouldn't be able to understand his thoughts and his coaches would demand he run back and forth like a metronome. Similarly, Ravel cannot play at Atlas or Ostersund after having played with Pogba at United and grown up watching Scholes and Giggs (and thinking he was better).

There is unrecognised talent in the world that sometimes, rarely. gets the right opportunity. Ighalo was a journeyman striker rubbished when we loaned him but scored a goal against LASK that I couldn't see Van Nistelrooy scoring. At some point in Ravel's life, I hope this is the moment, someone with real power in football (like SAF) will realise this. They will bring him to a club like United or Barcelona where he will see that he just has to do well in a few training sessions to get playing minutes and if does well he will then start.

Whether that happens or not is now out of Ravel's hands. But, despite all the pundits carrying on about how their application got them to where they are (none had a patch of Ravel's talent), the world is not predictable and, as obvious in this COVID crisis, can change instantly. For Ravel's sake, and for the sake of those who want to see brilliance shine at United, I hope that happens soon and at Old Trafford.
 

Striker10

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Everyone banging on about how talented he is/was could've hindered his career. Why try so hard if you're so great?
At United, Talent isn't enough.
 

elmo

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There’s plenty of players who looked way ahead of the their peers at a young age group but as they got closer to first team football or even earlier - their progress stagnates despite them being very professional.. could just be a case of everyone catching up or the fact that some element of their game made them look ahead of the curve but once they played against a certain level of player their attributes didn’t stand out as much.

Personally speaking I remember Ravel, Pogba and Sterling playing in a Liverpool United game just as a random example and for me it was always quite easy to see Pogba was the certainty to make it at highest level, Sterling also looked brilliant albeit you are never too sure if a player that small will be trusted by the respective coaches to be given a shot whereas Ravel to me looked very intelligent but he didn’t blow me away like United fans used to hype him at the time.

He had that famous gif where he pulled off that crazy dribble so he clearly had some talent but athleticism wise he wasn’t prodigious.. no explosive pace, not that strong and his agility was good but on a consistent basis it wasn’t insanely good.

He was the type of player who looked ahead of his peer group due to his football brain relative to their stages of development but in the professional adult game, every player has a good football brain to a certain degree. The fact he never honed this or the fact it wasn’t that exceptional compared to a fully fledged CM at EPL level is why he has never broke through despite his so called once in a generation talent.

Someone mentioned Tarrabt or Arfa and they make good points. Reason why people gambled on these morons and to some extent they could mix it in elite circles and earn regular game time was they had genuinely high level talent in terms of their ball carrying but it was mixed with a natural athleticism that meant their skills could be effective against professional grown adult players. Ravel was more intelligent than these guys but outside of his passing, was there really enough about his game to allow him to be a lazy dick and still make professionals look silly at the highest level? No and the lack of natural elite athleticism was probably the biggest reason why he’s never made it.
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.

If he had the workrate of someone like Rashford, he would be our best player right now. Ravel just wants the lifestyle but not the hard work to make it to the top.
 

elmo

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I am very glad that the lockdown has made media investigate the Ravel Morrison issue. It is blatantly obvious when one watches even one minute of him that he has a talent that NO ONE at United since George Best has had. Talent is a seldom defined term - he certainly has (had?) the requisite physicality and technique to star for United. Many players had that but what Ravel had that Best had and no one else has today bar Messi, Neymar and Ronaldinho was the preternaturally quick football brain, the same insouciance and belief that he could try things that others wouldn't dare.

A lot of the media has fallen over themselves saying that he wasn't a Gary Neville and what you need to make it is be Gary Neville. Gary Neville is a good pundit, but was at best (he would probably admit it) a marginal United footballer in those times, holding down a place because he was an Academy product. The world closed most of its footballing doors to Gary Neville but he took the one open one, of application, and ran through it. This is seen to be his great personal success (and Ravel's great personal failing). The uncomfortable truth and what has been a side note is that Gary Neville's achievement was not application just luck - his supportive family background and personal makeup and, I daresay, race opened as many non-footballing doors as Ravel's equivalents closed for him.

Geniuses like Ravel (and to a lesser extent Cantona, Ronaldinho and Neymar) don't see the world the same way as the Gary Nevilles of the world do. For them, making it by the time you are 19 is not necessary because they know they have the talent to make it later too. Teams on many continents, most recently one in the Premier League, have seen that talent and given Ravel trials, all of which he has grown tired of. The reason he failed those is also fundamentally tied to his genius. Messi couldn't play in the Championship because his teammates wouldn't be able to understand his thoughts and his coaches would demand he run back and forth like a metronome. Similarly, Ravel cannot play at Atlas or Ostersund after having played with Pogba at United and grown up watching Scholes and Giggs (and thinking he was better).

There is unrecognised talent in the world that sometimes, rarely. gets the right opportunity. Ighalo was a journeyman striker rubbished when we loaned him but scored a goal against LASK that I couldn't see Van Nistelrooy scoring. At some point in Ravel's life, I hope this is the moment, someone with real power in football (like SAF) will realise this. They will bring him to a club like United or Barcelona where he will see that he just has to do well in a few training sessions to get playing minutes and if does well he will then start.

Whether that happens or not is now out of Ravel's hands. But, despite all the pundits carrying on about how their application got them to where they are (none had a patch of Ravel's talent), the world is not predictable and, as obvious in this COVID crisis, can change instantly. For Ravel's sake, and for the sake of those who want to see brilliance shine at United, I hope that happens soon and at Old Trafford.
Stop dreaming.

He has wasted years and his technique is mid-tier at best for a professional. Combined that with his poor work ethics, he just doesn't belong at the top tier of football anymore. His talent has gotten him way more chances than someone like him deserves.
 

Raees

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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.

If he had the workrate of someone like Rashford, he would be our best player right now. Ravel just wants the lifestyle but not the hard work to make it to the top.
Agree but what is underrated about Scholes and Xavi is their elite level of agility in tight spaces compared to the average CM and short bursts to just get away from players trying to press them. Stamina wise as well, Xavi was regularly the biggest runner in games and Scholes despite his asthma would constantly be working on and off the ball.

Ravel could have worked on that for sure, but some players naturally have a very impressive athletic side without having to work that hard at it.. Arfa for example was very quick and Taraabt for all his flaws, a beast when running with the ball so both still somehow made an impact in professional game. Ravel didn’t quite have that on his side.. he was the type of talent who needed to work hard on all aspects of his game to survive and thrive in men’s game - he was overconfident in his overall game thinking he would make it without having to work hard so in that sense he overrated himself.
 

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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.
I'm inclined to agree with this. Youth level is nothing like senior level.

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.
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
 

amolbhatia50k

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I'm inclined to agree with this. Youth level is nothing like senior level.


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. Bai
lotelli 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.

As for the Figo logic, I think you can completely mess your career up if you choose/happen to do so. Don't think there's a base level where a particular level of talent needs to be, for the existence of his original talent to be acknowledged. There's a lot of factors involved - dedication, attitude, discipline, drive, decision making, your social circle, your family issues, up bringing etc

Many people are bringing up "major talents that didn't work out" being a normal situation. And of course we can revise our assessment of talent the more we see of it. But the difference is where the individual actually made the effort in developing and improving himself, he's actually given his natural talents a real chance, and on the other hand, the ones that didn't have the right mentality /attitude never really did..
 

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I have some insight to elite team sport development, albeit a different sport - water polo here in Australia.

Those identified as future talent at young ages e.g 12/13 I'd say that a very few make it through to play professionally (or semi-pro if you stay in Australia) much less for the national team.

By 15/16 you have a better idea of those who could make it but you are still only looking at a fairly small percentage - maybe 10% who make it. Then you get the players who develop during this age group both physically and mentally. It is amazing how many players who were identified early drop the sport when they get the first big selection knock e.g. miss out on a junior national team. Then there are a few who get injured and never come back fully. Add in the % who discover girls and drink etc and you realise that as well as the superbly talented (world class talent types) the others who make it do so due to high level skills but drive, determination and bloody hard work are as important, and the former is irrelevant without the later. A talentless clogger is a talentless clogger but natural talent is only one aspect of a number that determines who makes it - and there is also sometimes an element of luck of course including coaches biases.
 

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I feel like by 2050 people will still be discussing about Ravel and how He's the best talent They've seen at the academy but ultimately He FAILED. Which is what Professional football is all about. There's no shame in not making it, some people are just not cut to be a professional athlete. I know that it sounds ridiculous but there are people that you cannot discipline no matter what.
 

Jeppers7

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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. :p

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.
Yes because Sir Alex didn’t know a special talent, but you do :rolleyes:
 

Stacks

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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.

As for the Figo logic, I think you can completely mess your career up if you choose/happen to do so. Don't think there's a base level where a particular level of talent needs to be, for the existence of his original talent to be acknowledged. There's a lot of factors involved - dedication, attitude, discipline, drive, decision making, your social circle, your family issues, up bringing etc

Many people are bringing up "major talents that didn't work out" being a normal situation. And of course we can revise our assessment of talent the more we see of it. But the difference is where the individual actually made the effort in developing and improving himself, he's actually given his natural talents a real chance, and on the other hand, the ones that didn't have the right mentality /attitude never really did..
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Because he has never shown elite talent outside of youth football. that's the highest level he has been elite. Even now he is basically a championship player. Anderson was best player in the youth world cup, played regularly for Man Utd but was nothing special at senior level. Suggests his talent was elite for his age like a big kid playing with small kids but that means little in the mens game. What is elite level talent anyway?

Surely it's having talent that is elite compared with other footballers?
 

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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.

If he had the workrate of someone like Rashford, he would be our best player right now. Ravel just wants the lifestyle but not the hard work to make it to the top.
If he had the work ethic of his mate Jesse, he’d be an elite player and we’d not have to watch Jesse in a United shirt... Darn you Ravel :lol:
 

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Because he has never shown elite talent outside of youth football. that's the highest level he has been elite. Even now he is basically a championship player. Anderson was best player in the youth world cup, played regularly for Man Utd but was nothing special at senior level. Suggests his talent was elite for his age like a big kid playing with small kids but that means little in the mens game. What is elite level talent anyway?

Surely it's having talent that is elite compared with other footballers?
Anderson suffered a bad injury and turned into a fat bastard. He could have been a special player as well. He was an exceptional at 17, lost his turn of pace after injury then ate cake to get over his loss.
 

Rish Sawhney

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Because he has never shown elite talent outside of youth football. that's the highest level he has been elite. Even now he is basically a championship player. Anderson was best player in the youth world cup, played regularly for Man Utd but was nothing special at senior level. Suggests his talent was elite for his age like a big kid playing with small kids but that means little in the mens game. What is elite level talent anyway?

Surely it's having talent that is elite compared with other footballers?
Thats just provably wrong. Here's him showing talent against one of the best defenders in the league for one.


Of course this doesn't mean he's the second coming of Ronaldinho, but it is possible to be as talented as the best of them and not make it professionally due to off field problems like attitude, the people you hang out with, work ethic, etc.
 

amolbhatia50k

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Because he has never shown elite talent outside of youth football. that's the highest level he has been elite. Even now he is basically a championship player. Anderson was best player in the youth world cup, played regularly for Man Utd but was nothing special at senior level. Suggests his talent was elite for his age like a big kid playing with small kids but that means little in the mens game. What is elite level talent anyway?

Surely it's having talent that is elite compared with other footballers?
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Or it suggests he had elite talent compared to other footballers but made feck all of it.
 

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Thats just provably wrong. Here's him showing talent against one of the best defenders in the league for one.


Of course this doesn't mean he's the second coming of Ronaldinho, but it is possible to be as talented as the best of them and not make it professionally due to off field problems like attitude, the people you hang out with, work ethic, etc.
So if you take on a good defender once or score one great goal, your talent is elite? surely if this is elite, why has it not been repeated in other games in every league? he has been playing for many clubs since then. Like saying Taarabt has elite level talent because of some of the special things he did (more frequently mind) with QPR. So is Adel an elite level talent also?

 

Water Melon

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Anderson suffered a bad injury and turned into a fat bastard. He could have been a special player as well. He was an exceptional at 17, lost his turn of pace after injury then ate cake to get over his loss.
Very accurate chronology of Ando's career to be fair :D
 

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Because he has never shown elite talent outside of youth football. that's the highest level he has been elite. Even now he is basically a championship player. Anderson was best player in the youth world cup, played regularly for Man Utd but was nothing special at senior level. Suggests his talent was elite for his age like a big kid playing with small kids but that means little in the mens game. What is elite level talent anyway?

Surely it's having talent that is elite compared with other footballers?
Or it suggests he had elite talent compared to other footballers but made feck all of it.
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Elite talent compared with YOUNG footballlers. If his talent was superior to pros today we would see it no? He would have to have quit training and playing for years in order to drop off and become the average player he is now. Even today the retired players still have tekkas when you see them kicking it around. He looks average, maybe he did just not train for a long time and get rusty. Who knows.

Edit: Joe Cole was the second coming of Christ as a young footballer. He did train regularly, take it serious and become a very good player but not elite in my books His talent was not elite compared with other pro ballers, so how could ravels have certainly had elite talent until we see it demonstrated at pro level?
 

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So if you take on a good defender once or score one great goal, your talent is elite? surely if this is elite, why has it not been repeated in other games in every league? he has been playing for many clubs since then. Like saying Taarabt has elite level talent because of some of the special things he did (more frequently mind) with QPR. So is Adel an elite level talent also?

Ok this is getting ridiculous. Your entire argument is based on the idea that if you have elite talent you will inevitably end up having a good professional career and if you don’t you never had elite talent to begin with.

I hope I don’t have to articulate how dumb that is. Sometimes maybe you have elite talent and you just don’t care enough about playing or maybe you’re just a dick to everyone or you’re just not professional enough to fit all the time. All of which apply to Morrison in part.
 

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Ok this is getting ridiculous. Your entire argument is based on the idea that if you have elite talent you will inevitably end up having a good professional career and if you don’t you never had elite talent to begin with.

I hope I don’t have to articulate how dumb that is. Sometimes maybe you have elite talent and you just don’t care enough about playing or maybe you’re just a dick to everyone or you’re just not professional enough to fit all the time. All of which apply to Morrison in part.
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
 

Rish Sawhney

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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
But that’s exactly what you are saying. Queriesma and Taraabt have had good professional careers even if they didn’t make it in top teams. My point is that just because you have elite talent doesn’t mean you’d even make it as a professional. You need to work on it, make it first priority in your life, not be out committing petty crimes with your mates, etc.

From what I’ve heard and read the reason people say he didn’t make it was that he had a habit of getting into petty crime with his mates and wasn’t focused on United. Then when he was starting to get a footing at West Ham there was that whole thing with Allardyce trying to get him to sign with his agent. If you think that if you have elite talent but don’t turn up to training or give it your all you’ll automatically have a Taraabt or Queresma level career purely based on talent then you’re severely underestimating the commitment and hard work required to make it as a professional in the premier league even towards the lower end.
 

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Wow is this still being discussed, I don’t get people’s obsession with him.

I’ve had MUTV since the 00’s and saw almost his entire youth progression, the kid was a level above his peers but that’s all it was... a period at youth level.

Players like Quaresma and even Bebe ffs! have had regular game time in first team’s.

He was overhyped, there is no doubt about it. And let me tell you now that SAF was clearly exaggerating saying he was the best kid he had seen, better than every one of the class of 92 including Giggs, Scholes? Better than a teenage Rooney? Like feck was he