Talent Evaluation - Reprint

How Good Is Your Kid, Really?
Depends On Who's Watching...

Since Jeremy Lin (whose brother plays hoops at Hamilton College) hit the big time with the Knicks, lots has been discussed about talent, and the identification of said characteristic.  My favorite article is not (another) saccarine rags-to-riches tale of woe and hard work, rewarded and happily ever after, etc. Rather, it was this article (thanks to my big sis for passing it on) from Wired.  Yup, Wired magazine.

Lehrer raises a great point about talent identification, and how Lin is a resounding example (though hardly the only one) of how absolutely lousy front office guys are at drafting players and building teams.  Then Lehrer shows a result from a Yale paper indicating NFL draft decisions are "right" 52% of the time (so for all the combine results, scouting and hyperbole, guys pan out at the rate one would expect from a coin flip.  Not a great validation of NFL front office track records.) Watch the Sloan School of Business (MIT) video to the same effect here from their wonderful annual sports analytics conference.  Or Bloomberg's shorter version here.  Seriously, for all the evaluating the pro clubs do, they really ought to do better, oughtn't they?

Far more disturbingly, especially as you read below about the French National Team, is the notion of youth coaches (who know far, far, far less than GMs/coaches at the top levels) picking teams!  Barcelona are

If I'm a parent of a precocious young soccer player, Lehrer's article will make it hard for me to put much faith in youth coaches picking teams- given that most youth coaches are pros at something other than soccer, and that the NFL and NBA professionals (who should know the most about talent and team-building) are lousy at this stuff.  I shudder to think of the number of times I have heard coaches write off players (or overstate their potential) without any self-awareness of how poorly humans do in evaluating others.  Makes you kind of nervous about that next performance review at work, doesn't it?

Now, all this inevitably points to problems with the American way of doing things; the college system throws the whole deal off.  By contrast, due to some injuries, the CSKA Moscow team playing Real Madrid in the Champions League on February 21st (2013) had a 16-year-old back up GK on the bench.  No college for that kid, I'm guessing.  And our slavish dedication to stats in this country (with it's pinnacle, Moneyball, showing how clever use of math to achieve a fourth-place finish is preferred to doing things a better way) will always hinder us.  Quantifying is good...But only the truly exceptional produce numbers worth paying attention to- and that only after they're done as professionals!  Think of stats like investments: past performance does not indicate future returns.  One good year does not an all-time great make.  So many American soccer players have "great" U15 seasons...

In soccer, of course, stats are few and far between in terms of offensive production or defensive standards beyond shutouts.  Though OPTA is helping: see the Apple Store for a great app!  UEFA is doing some similar though less interactive stat compiling too.  The nice thing in Europe (and most other regions with well-developed soccer cultures) is that young players play in a youth system through a single club, and they are watched by more or less the same staff year after year, and are trained to learn a club's given strategic approach thoroughly.  The first team coach, say, David Moyes, can actually observe the kid training, interacting with the first team players, playing matches with the youth team or reserve team, or have the kid come to training sessions and actually play with the first team.

But here in the US, pro teams have to draft college players who, though they may have achieved lofty accolades and win/loss tallies, are playing at a totally different level, in a wholly different system.  Soccer is beginning to shift this with the academy system and the subsequent homegrown signings (see: Jimmy Mclaughlin, lately of Colgate, now trying to make it with the Philly Union first team...sent to the USL in July 2012- as yet to make the teamsheet for the first team) and one can only presume in time it will become the standard path to the pros, if for no other reason than it gives teams a much more consistent environment in which to evaluate players.  For every Bill Hamid or Deandre Yedlin, there's a Mclaughlin or, very recently, Freddy Adu (who was a sure thing back in 2004 at the age of 14) who's shopping his services around to the 10th team in 11 years.

All of which is to say, when a player is self-evaluating, it has a lot more to do with his or her regard for their own selves than what an extremely limited sample size of coaches think.  A single coach may not "like" a player, but that doesn't mean the player wouldn't be excellent in another culture/system.  Or that they might grow, or otherwise develop at an unexpected time/rate.  This is why youth players need to watch college games before going into the college selection process; they'll want to apply to schools that play a way that suits the player.  But the main point is that the "experts" aren't all that expert...and players should remain stubbornly focused on finding situations that fit them, as individuals, and to simply improving themselves as much as they can - and keep it basic; there was never a player with too good a first touch, passing ability, 1v1 defending.

Take these comments from 2009 as recorded by Mike Woitalla in a conversation with Jose Ramon Alexanco, the director of Barcelona's youth program:

"We don't demand that the youth teams win," said Alexanco. "We demand that they play good soccer. We don't use the word, 'winning.'"

Not until after the players reach age 16 is there fitness training.

"That's when we start to concentrate on the technical, tactical and physical requirements they need for the first team," Alexanco said. "Before that age we mainly play soccer. Everything is with the ball. We work on skills and some tactics."

The Barca program fields teams from age 10 up. The 10-year-olds - the Benjamins - practice four days a week, in 45-minute sessions, and play 7-v-7 games on the weekend. All of the older age groups play 11-v-11.

"They play the same system, in the 4-3-3 formation, used by first team," says Alexanco. "The developmental teams have to reflect the personality of the first team. That also means playing attacking, attractive soccer.

I don't hold this up as a blanket suggestion to US youth soccer.  But I think it does pretty well indicate a better way of designing club structure.  Gabrielle Marcotti makes some good points in a WSJ article about the "nature vs. nurture" debate in player development.  I would only add to his line of logic that someone, somewhere, provided a framework for the talented kid picked up by La Masia, and did so in a manner that made that player well-suited for Barcelona's style of play.  That's not a random, lucky thing...It might not have been an environment that exactly replicates the demands of La Masia, but it was close enough to be a fine starting point.  Would Messi have done well if he'd signed with Stoke?  With Napoli?

When youth academies work—and Barcelona is a case in point—it's not really about producing talent. What's most important is acquiring talent and preparing those players to fit seamlessly into the club's style of play. For all the romanticism of La Masia, its coaches aren't modern day alchemists. Their potion is finding kids who are already talented and molding them into useful pieces for the best soccer team in the world.

Bottom line, if clubs don't offer a comprehensive player development model, how can a player be evaluated effectively?  If the system changes from one season to the next, the demands on an outside back can change drastically and a successful player one year can become ineffective the next simply because the job changed. Barca keep the criteria the same from early years up through the first team, and simply keep working with the best players they can find to match those criteria.  There is no such thing as an ideal soccer player...and even a left back may need vastly differing skill sets from one team to another!

Consider this from Michael Cox, regarding the French National Team:

Look at the current side, for example, and you'll find a raft of players who developed into top-quality footballers extremely late. Olivier Giroud was 24 during his first Ligue 1 campaign, and the same is true of his Arsenal teammate Laurent Koscielny. In fact, they played together in Ligue 2 at Tours.  

Similarly, the wonderfully gifted Mathieu Valbuena was playing in the third division at 22, and only a Ligue 1 regular at 24. Right-back Rod Fanni was playing on loan at second division Chateauroux at 24, and while centre-back Adil Rami made his Ligue 1 debut at 21, before that he'd been an amateur, playing in the fourth division and working for the local government part-time. Mathieu Debuchy is another who came to prominence late on.  

None of these players had been involved in the junior ranks of the French national side -- they don't have a youth cap between them. They made their debuts at, respectively, 25, 26, 25, 26, 24 and 26. All have progressed since the last World Cup, and -- perhaps aside from Fanni, now 31 -- should be peaking close to Euro 2016, held in their home country. 

Whoops...you mean a 15 year old who isn't a starlet can still become a halfway decent international? Stunning stuff.

Cox offers a logical reason:

Perhaps the truth is that Valbuena, Koscielny and Giroud went unnoticed because they weren't physically impressive at a young age. There remains a great focus upon power, physicality and explosive pace among the French youth sides -- it's not difficult to imagine that a playmaker based around clever positioning, a technical but slender centre-back and a slow, rather one-footed striker didn't stand out among others. 

Ironically, all this is to support the notion of working hard, remaining dedicated to a process, paying dues, in short, the American Dream myth...but clearly it counters what we see played out year after year in youth soccer in our communities in actual practice.