Talent's Not Enough
Chris Dunlavy on right stuff
ATTITUDE. It’s a word every football manager loves.We use it to laud grafters like James Milner.We use it to pillory huffsters like Mario Balotelli.We even used it to justify Scott Parker’s England call-up.
What everyone in football seems to confuse, however, is attitude on the pitch with attitude off the pitch.
Take George Best. The Northern Irishman was the archetypal Champagne Charlie, the first player to truly blend front page with back.
He drank, he spent the wee hours in nightclubs and the early ones shacked up with Miss World. He turned up late for training, if at all. He argued with managers, got into bother with her majesty’s finest.
But stick him on 100 yards of grass and you never got anything but brilliance. Few players in history have been as flat-out brutalised as Best. He was hacked and kicked for 90 minutes straight, but never stopped seeking the ball, never stopped running, never stopped entertaining.
“It seems impossible to hurt him,” said former Liverpool manager Joe Mercer. “All manner of men have tried to intimidate him. But Best merely glides along, riding tackles and brushing giants aside like leaves.”
Much the same could be said of Maradona. His wages mainly went up his nose, but it never stopped him tearing defences to pieces.
Like Best, he was a magnet for hatchet men. Like Best, he never went missing. And like Best, he fought like a tiger for his team. He even won them a World Cup.
Even the myriad indiscretions of Luis Suarez are underscored by a tenacity that ensures he will rank among the best of his generation.
Contrast that with Mario Balotelli. At Man City, everyone seemed to be labouring under
the impression that if the Italian could just grow up and stop his wacky antics he’d magically transform into a superstar.
But the problem was never the fireworks in his bathroom. It was the lack of them on the pitch.
Only at Liverpool are we seeing what Balotelli is really about. The moment things don’t go his way, the striker downs tools. He stops moving, stops making simple passes.
He starts taking shots from crazy angles and moans at team-mates for failing to spot his non-existent runs. The result, the team – none of that matters. It is all about Mario’s misery.
A lack of professionalism off the pitch is no barrier to greatness. But without a bloodyminded attitude on it – that ability to suck up punishment, roll with the punches and still summon the courage to land a knockout blow – no player can hope to stand among the world’s finest. By way of illustration, here are a handful of those blessed with talent but who sadly lacked the fortitude to show it.
Adel Taarabt
Poor Harry Redknapp. As Tottenham manager he couldn’t wait to get shot of the troublesome Moroccan; now he has to deal with him all over again at QPR. And it isn’t going well.
“I can’t protect people who don’t want to run and train, and are about three stone overweight,” said Redknapp following questions about Taarabt’s absence.
“He played in a reserve game the other day and I could have run about more than he did. What am I supposed to keep saying? Keep getting your £60,000, £70,000 a week and don’t train? What’s the game coming to? I can’t pick him.”
At his best – and AC Milan were impressed enough to sign him on loan last term – Taarabt is a fabulously skilful dribbler who can put even the finest defender on his backside.
At his worst – and that, sadly, is far more common – the 25-year-old is a stroppy, selfindulgent liability. Nothing sums him up better than the moment at Hull in 2011 when he responded to a duff refereeing decision by spending ten minutes sulking by the touchline, refusing to accept the ball and signalling to be substituted, effectively leaving his side with ten (very confused) men.
Alvaro Recoba
El Chino (he looked a bit Chinese and you can get away with that sort of nickname in Italy) was once the highest paid player in the world.
The Uruguayan made his Inter Milan debut against Brescia in 1997 – the same day as Ronaldo – and announced his arrival with a
couple of screamers. Aged just 20, it seemed the next Maradona had pitched up at San Siro.
Unfortunately, he was subjected to a similar level of thuggery and – unlike the great man – wilted under the abuse. Despite flashes of brilliance, Recoba was repeatedly hustled out of games and spent the majority of his ten years at Inter as a bit part player.
Though hardly a failure – he scored 72 goals in 248 appearances – Recoba never attained the status his ability merited.
Ricardo Quaresma
Quaresma’s nickname – The Mustang – said it all. He ran wild and free, but rarely with any sense of purpose or direction. A teenage contemporary of Cristiano Ronaldo at Sporting Lisbon, Quaresma was the one they talked about in reverent tones. When he signed for Barcelona and Ronaldo joined United, most in Portugal felt the Catalans had done the best business.
What they hadn’t reckoned on was Quaresma’s total refusal to adapt his game and inability to put a shift in. He went forward, he did tricks, or he did nowt.
First Frank Rijkaard and then Jose Mourinho tired of his one-dimensional play. In Italy, he even won the ‘Golden Trash Can’ for worst player of the season.
Now back at Porto after spells in Turkey and the UAE, the 31-year-old appears to have belatedly seen the light. “I know talent alone is not enough to have a great career,” he said in May, alas too late to fulfil his undisputed potential.
Carlos Alberto de Jesus
Who? That’s a fair question, but cast your mind back to Porto’s incredible Champions League victory in 2004 and you may just remember a 19-year-old Brazilian playing up top. In fact, he scored the opening goal in their 3-0 win over Monaco in the final.
Sadly, that was as good as it ever got for the striker, who has spent the subsequent decade
falling out with team-mates, arguing with managers and pretty much alienating everyone he worked with.
Liable to sulk and slope around the pitch when things weren’t going well, he was also unwilling to graft. Urged to work harder when a £7.8m move to Werder Bremen went awry, he refused, saying his poor form was the result of insomnia caused by a change in time zones. Considering he’d been there for six months, nobody was convinced.
Now 29 and back in Brazil – where he has played for pretty much everyone – the man seen as Brazil’s next big thing missed the last nine months through a doping ban and is currently without a club.
Nicklas Bendtner
According to Arsene Wenger, Bendtner could be “unstoppable”. Unfortunately, the Dane has been forever hamstrung by a belief that he was born the world’s greatest striker with no possible scope for improvement.
“I should be starting every game,” he once said. “I should be playing every minute of every match and always be in team. If you ask me if I’m one of the best players in the world I say ‘yes’, because I believe it.”
Advice was ignored, criticism rebuffed. “You could not say much to him about his game because it doesn’t take much for him not to like you,” said former Denmark team-mate Harvard Nordtveit. “He does things his own way and only that way.”
As a result, Bendtner has progressed not one iota since his days on loan at Birmingham in 2006. Now at Wolfsburg, the 26-year-old has managed just 43 goals in nine years.