Henry Winter today on Sky's Sunday Supplement program opined that you can't teach a "football brain", you have to be born with it (he was referring to Theo Walcott, who over the last 3 seasons at Arsenal regularly made bad decisions on the pitch).
I think Henry Winter is talking about the mental parts of a footballer's skills, so things like positioning, anticipation, vision, decision making etc.
Personally, I think this is nonsense. Are we saying you can be taught "simple" things like quantum physics, but football? Christ, you've got to be born with it!
No wonder football coaching in England is so bad if an intelligent and influential journalist like Henry Winter has opinions like that.
Also, in my own experience I've found you can learn football how to play football, no matter your age.
People who know me will know how much I love football, but I only started getting into football relatively late, around 16 or 17 years old.
And around this time I also started playing football games like Pro Evo, which if you want to get good at requires you to have a good understanding of football.
When I started playing it, I was terrible; I'd choose teams like France (who were at that time the World and European champions) and play against teams like China (who are still pretty poor to this day). And I'd still lose. Badly.
But after a lot of practise, watching more football on TV and playing down the park, I eventually got quite good at it, and at my peak for a short time was probably the best player in my group of friends.
I'm not suggesting I've now got the mind of a football genius, but from where I started (having very little knowledge of football) to becoming a decent player (albeit on a video game), the actual knowledge is still very similar.
If someone has shown enough potential to get a professional contract at a big club, surely with hard work and patience you can improve their abilities?
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