WASTED TALENT? NO SUCH THING!
TOWARDS the end of his miserable reign at Ipswich Town, Roy Keane was asked if he might have done anything differently.
By that stage, the Irishman was almost exclusively coaching the Under-21s, his famously short fuse sizzled to its roots by disenchantment with modern professionals.
“Ah look,” he said, fixing the reporter with that penetrating glare. “If ifs and ands were pots and pans… it doesn’t work like that.” Keane’s ire is frequently misplaced, but he had a point. Football is chock full of hard luck stories, and there’s often a compelling reason for failure. Ravel Morrison was once described by Sir Alex Ferguson as the most gifted teenager he’d ever seen. Yet for all the talk of squandered talent, a chronic lack of tactical discipline meant Morrison was never going to be England’s answer to Zinedine Zidane. His struggles are not so much a ‘what if ’ story as a realisation of the inevitable.
Similarly, the old argument that Matt Le Tissier would have won 50 caps for Spain is predicated on highlights reels, not the dayto-day reality of a player who couldn’t tackle, run or stay out of his local. Scott Davies, the former Reading midfielder who now plies his trade at Slough Town, is a perfect example. As a novice reporter in 2007, I watched Davies hammer Aldershot to the Conference title with a succession of long-range screamers. To this day, the midfielder remains one of the cleanest strikers of a ball I have ever seen in the flesh – and I spent my teenage years watching Peter Beardsley, Alan Shearer and David Ginola.
Anonymity
On his return to the Madejski in 2009, Davies was chosen by Brendan Rodgers to start the season ahead of Gylfi Sigurdsson. He earned man of the match in each of his first two games, yet within a month was bombed out on loan to Wycombe and would never play for Reading again. Sigurdsson filled the gap, scored umpteen long-range missiles and lit the touchpaper on a career of top-flight distinction.
As the seasons rolled by and Davies tumbled into anonymity, I often wondered whether a fairer wind might have carried him to the same heights. Davies clearly had the class. Rodgers saw that. Had he just been spectacularly unfortunate to find himself fighting for the same position, in the same team, as one of the few players in England who could leather a ball better than him?
It was only years later that Davies himself revealed the gambing addiction that had devastated his career.
Thesis
Even whilst those thunderbolts were rippling nets across the Conference, he was losing thousands of pounds in poker games and roulette machines. Instead of sleeping, Davies fuelled himself with energy drinks and stayed up all night placing bets – often on his own team. Training, even matches, became an inconvenience. “Betting was why I got up in the morning,” he told the BBC in 2017. “Football was just getting in the way of that. I couldn’t control it.” As his wages went up, so did his losses. Before long, everybody in football – managers, agents, scouts and chief execs – knew what was going on. There is, of course, a debate to be had about support in football; if everybody knew, couldn’t somebody have intervened? Davies now performs that role himself, talking to young professionals about the perils of excess time and money. Ultimately, though, I was wrong about Davies. He wasn’t unlucky. He wasn’t a ‘what if ’ story. He wasn’t one that got away.
He was a brilliant player, possibly the equal of Sigurdsson. But, unlike the Icelander, he had flaws that made it impossible to capitalise on that talent. In the final reckoning, that is no different to someone who didn’t possess strength, or pace, or a first touch. It is a bit like the person we all know who was brilliant at school and now tells everyone they could have gone to Cambridge. Intelligence is but one ingredient. Dedication, determination and a near suicidal work ethic are also required to succeed at such institutions. In reality, that person wouldn’t have got through the initial interview, never mind the first term.
Football, too, requires the full package. In the modern game, where every step and every breath is measured, where analysis is the equal of fitness and every signing is researched with the rigour of a thesis, there is no such thing as a wasted talent.