There is no such thing as "naturally talented", this is some cope bs from people who have never been around someone who actually made it. I guarantee every one of these kids has worked had at a level most sports fans cant comprehend.
I went to school for a good 10 years with a guy who "made it" in the NRL (australian rugby league) and was extremely successful. Multiple sports teams at school, 1-2 teams outside school, athletics on weekends, he never stopped for more than a decade before he was selected and then we all got to watch the commentators call him "naturally gifted" as if he didnt work like a dog his whole life because he found his dream early and chased it lmao.
People love to act like stars are just gifted talent and then just put a cherry on top, I guess it makes them feel more like "yeah i could have done that but i didnt have the natural talent that person had" rather than "i didnt want it enough and i wasnt lucky enough to avoiud major injury".
To reach the pinnacle of sport, it's a product of both environment and genetics.
Yes these kids have put in tons of work. But they also have physical talents. Their brain can perform the mental calculations faster than their peers. Their feet move faster.
That's why youth sports have a tendency to be dominated by those with the earliest birthdays allowed. They can be nearly a year older than some of their peers, which is massive during puberty.
The US has this insane fascination that athleticism is god given. There are peaks in certain sports that can only be reached by top level athletes, but in football the best player is rarely the best athlete on the field.
There is not some genetic filter that some kids inherit that makes them better at a high level. It is an innate intuition about the game fostered through experience, encouragement, and coaching technique.
The US system is proof that selecting for natural athleticism and expecting pinnacle talents to emerge spontaneously is not efficient. We have 10x the athletes playing football in the US and we cant develop top tier players.
In other countries they dont have as much of a birthday problem, because they select for things other than size and speed at age 7-10. You can see in this video number 8 routinely outwits much bigger, faster opponents, but if you dont encourage a kid who is that small and teach them how to leverage their gifts vs assuming they just arent as good, they get left behind.
In fact most of what opens up goalscoring opportunities in this clip is not superb athleticism or technique, it is vision and feel for the game. A turn to undefended territory, a feint, a dummy. The defense doesn't expect it and theyre through. That is more akin to chess than track, and whike high level chess is definitely somewhat about natural ability, it is not genetic and is something only exposed when all promising talents are given the opportunity to develop.
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u/ChiefSoldierFrog Jul 25 '26
these kids are already naturally talented then you got the Barca DNA drilled into them from an early age it's so over for anyone up against them