Reply to Professional soccer players- do you think they stood out at a young age?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I used to live overseas and we would have a number of European scouts come to the tournaments we attended. The first thing they would say was "don't even talk to me until after your kid reaches puberty." It was such a massive change that they really didn't feel there was much value watching or scouting kids until after that point. [/quote]

Meanwhile, at places like Ajax, they are scouting kids from 5 on up:  https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.html

As other PPs have noted, virtually all current pros stood out from a young age.  They are all athletically gifted, whether they look like your typical American basketball or football athletic star or not.  Whether you make it depends on not just your genetics and work rate, but also your family situation, attitude, the training environment you find (or don't), and all sorts of luck.  Puberty can certainly play a role (especially with respect to positions where height is favored), but less so than in many other sports.

I'd also mention that in my experience there are relatively few people who can accurately assess a kid's soccer ability at a young age (in terms of predicting which kids have the potential to be great--most halfway decent coaches or knowledgeable observers can tell you very quickly which kids will never make it due to their athletic limitations).  We've run across very few in our youth soccer years. [b]The most impressive we found was a dad on one of my kid's teams who was absolutely obsessed with the game. He was the go-to source for all the other parents (most of us new to the sport), and was happy to share what he thought the potential ceiling was for our kids, who were around 10, if they kept training hard.  With only one exception, he correctly predicted which kids would drop the sport within a couple of years, which would make the HS team, and which had D3 or D1 college potential.  He also IDd 2 kids on opposing teams with pro potential, and sure enough, they have both been starters on youth national teams.  He was never a serious player himself, but was much better at recognizing talent and describing kids' particular gifts than any of the coaches we had at the time[/b].      [/quote]

That's really cool! Did he ever articulate what he was looking for?[/quote]

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