Talent Is Not Potential, and Potential Is Not Performance

A Psychological Perspective on the Development of Young Athletes

Dr. Estienne Cronjé

Talent is one of those concepts in sport that we seem to understand until we try to define exactly what we mean by it. Most people who have spent enough time around sport will tell you that they can recognize a talented young athlete. Sometimes they probably can.

There are young athletes whose movement, coordination, awareness, physical ability or understanding of a particular sport is noticeably different from that of their peers. The difficulty begins when what we observe at a particular age is used to make assumptions about what that athlete will eventually become.

This is where I believe we need to be more careful with the distinction between talent, potential and performance. They are obviously connected, but they do not describe the same thing. Talent tells us something about ability that is already present and, to some extent, observable. Potential is prospective. It concerns what that ability may become through development. Performance is different again because it is ultimately concerned with what an athlete is able to produce, repeatedly and under the conditions in which that performance is required.

The distinction matters because when we identify talent in children and adolescents, we are effectively trying to predict the future development of a person who is still developing physically, psychologically, socially and educationally. That is an extraordinarily difficult prediction to make with certainty, and the research on talent development increasingly reflects this complexity. Talent detection, talent identification, development and selection are now commonly treated as related but distinct processes rather than as a single moment in which an athlete is somehow “discovered” (Liu et al., 2024).

The athlete we see at 13, 15 or 17 is also not simply the product of natural ability. By the time we observe that athlete, development has already taken place. Coaching has taken place. Family circumstances have had an influence. Biological maturation has occurred at a particular rate. The athlete has had a certain level of access to facilities, competition, nutrition, equipment and education. Some have already accumulated years of structured development, while others may be encountering structured sport for the first time.

Current performance therefore tells us something important, but it cannot tell us everything.

The Difficulty With Identifying Talent Early

I do not believe we should respond to this complexity by pretending that natural ability does not matter. There is a popular sporting narrative that sufficient hard work can overcome virtually any difference in natural ability. It is an attractive idea, particularly because it places the outcome almost entirely within the control of the individual, but elite sport is considerably less straightforward.

Different sporting codes make different demands on athletes. Physical characteristics matter. Coordination matters. Perceptual ability matters. Technical aptitude matters. In some sports, height or body composition may become particularly important; in others, reaction speed, spatial awareness or specific physiological characteristics may have greater influence. Hard work is essential, but hard work does not take place independently of the biological and psychological characteristics of the person doing the work. My concern is therefore not with recognizing talent. It is with assuming that early talent provides a reliable map of later performance.

Youth sport makes this particularly difficult because children of the same chronological age can be at very different stages of biological development. Relative age effects have been documented extensively in sport, with athletes born earlier within an age-grouping period often being overrepresented in developmental and competitive systems (Cobley et al., 2009). Biological maturation creates another layer of complexity because an athlete who is physically advanced at 14 may temporarily possess advantages in strength, speed or size that become less significant once peers mature.

This creates a practical problem for selection. Coaches have to select somebody. Development programs have limited places, and decisions cannot simply be postponed until everybody reaches adulthood. Current performance therefore has to matter. The mistake would be to assume that current superiority necessarily represents greater long-term potential.

There is research that should make us particularly cautious about that assumption. Güllich and Barth (2024), in a systematic review and meta-analysis examining early talent promotion, found that earlier entry into formal talent-development programs was associated with greater junior performance, while higher-performing senior athletes had, on average, entered these programs later. Other work examining the developmental histories of successful athletes has similarly suggested that the pathways associated with outstanding junior performance are not necessarily identical to those associated with outstanding senior performance (Güllich et al., 2022, 2023).

This does not mean that an exceptional 14-year-old should somehow be regarded with suspicion simply because they are exceptional early. It means that we should resist assuming that the ranking we observe among young athletes today will remain unchanged five or ten years from now. Development does not occur in a straight line.

We Should Pay More Attention to the Direction of Development

One aspect of athlete development that interests me considerably is not simply where an athlete currently stands, but how that athlete arrived there and how quickly that position is changing.

I think of this as developmental velocity. I am using the term descriptively rather than suggesting that it represents a standardized construct within sport psychology. It is simply a useful way of thinking about developmental trajectory.

Consider two athletes of the same age. One is currently significantly better than the other. If we assess them today, there is little disagreement about who the stronger performer is. But suppose that the stronger athlete has remained at approximately the same level for two years, while the second athlete has improved substantially during the same period. The first remains better, but the second athlete’s rate of development tells us something that their current performance alone does not.

I would want to know why that athlete is improving.

Perhaps they are particularly receptive to coaching. Perhaps they are able to take information from training and apply it independently. Perhaps their physical development is beginning to catch up with their technical ability. Perhaps they have recently gained access to resources that were previously unavailable. Perhaps they have simply begun to understand what serious development requires from them.

Conversely, I would want to understand why the more talented athlete is no longer progressing. It may have nothing to do with attitude. Development naturally slows at certain stages, and the closer an athlete moves toward the limits of performance, the smaller improvements become. However, a developmental program should be interested in trajectory rather than merely ranking.

Psychological characteristics become particularly relevant here. MacNamara and Collins (2011) examined psychological characteristics associated with developing excellence and emphasized the role of psychological skills in navigating the challenges that occur during development. Their work, and subsequent research in this area, is useful because it moves psychology away from the idea that mental skills become relevant only once somebody is already an elite athlete. Psychological development is taking place throughout the pathway.

Young athletes have to learn how to deal with correction, disappointment, competition, uncertainty and periods during which improvement is not immediately visible. They have to learn what happens when they are no longer the strongest athlete in the group, when somebody younger begins outperforming them, or when a coach identifies weaknesses they have previously been able to hide through natural ability. Those moments often tell us a great deal about development.

Educability Matters

This brings me to something I regard as particularly important in young athletes: educability.

I do not mean academic achievement alone. A young person can be academically strong and still struggle to receive coaching, while another may have fairly ordinary school results and possess an exceptional capacity to learn within a sporting environment.

By educability, I mean the person’s ability and willingness to learn. Can they listen to information, understand it and do something with it? Can they receive correction without every correction becoming a personal confrontation? Can they recognize that something in their approach is not working and modify it? Can they eventually begin identifying some of these things themselves rather than waiting for a coach to provide every answer?

These qualities become increasingly important as athletes progress because high-performance sport becomes cognitively demanding. Athletes are expected to understand tactical systems, analyze opponents, engage with performance information, manage nutrition and recovery, communicate within increasingly complex teams and make decisions rapidly under pressure. An athlete who has learned how to learn therefore possesses something valuable that extends well beyond the classroom.

This is one reason I do not regard education and sporting development as two separate processes.

In South Africa, we often speak about education as a young athlete’s “fallback.” I understand exactly what is meant by the term and, within our economic context, I agree with the principle behind it. Professional sport is uncertain. Injuries occur, selection changes, careers can be short, and the number of young athletes who will eventually earn a sustainable income from professional sport is small. It would be irresponsible to develop a child toward one uncertain outcome while allowing every other possibility to disappear.

Where I differ slightly from the conventional interpretation is that I do not believe education only becomes valuable if sport fails. Education contributes to the athlete we are developing in the first place.

The ability to understand, communicate, think critically, interpret information and adapt is relevant to sporting development. Education also gives the young athlete a broader understanding of themselves and the world in which they will eventually have to function. A professional sporting career does not remove the need for those abilities.

There is also a psychological consideration. If a young person’s entire future becomes dependent on success in sport, a sporting setback begins to carry a much greater meaning. Deselection is no longer simply deselection. Injury is no longer simply an injury. A poor season can begin to threaten the person’s entire understanding of their future. I do not believe responsible youth development should deliberately create that level of dependency.

We Cannot Ignore Where an Athlete Comes From

There is another difficulty in talent identification that I believe is especially relevant in South Africa. We cannot evaluate young athletes as though they all arrived at the same starting point.

Take two 14-year-old athletes attending the same trial. One has participated in structured sport since the age of seven. They have had good coaching, appropriate equipment, regular competition, access to facilities and parents who understand how sporting pathways operate. The second athlete may have grown up with very little of this. They may have trained inconsistently, used poor facilities, had limited equipment and rarely competed against athletes outside their immediate community.

If the first athlete performs better at the trial, that performance is real. We should not diminish it simply because the athlete has received good development. They may also genuinely be more talented. However, we have to acknowledge that we are not comparing two untouched biological specimens. We are comparing two young people whose abilities have already interacted with very different environments.

Research examining socioeconomic differences in organized youth sport participation demonstrates that access itself is unequal. Owen et al. (2022), reviewing more than 100 studies, found substantial socioeconomic inequalities in organized sport participation among children and adolescents.

Participation is obviously not the same as talent, but it determines who enters the environments in which talent can be noticed, coached and developed.

For me, this is where grassroots development becomes essential.

If we only become interested in athletes once they are sufficiently polished to enter high-performance structures, then we are partly selecting according to who had access to development before they reached us. There has to be a stage within the sporting pathway where the objective is not merely to select the best-developed athlete but to identify raw characteristics that may respond exceptionally well to development.

This is also where I would caution against moving too far in the opposite direction. Socioeconomic disadvantage is not evidence of hidden sporting potential. We should not romanticize under-resourced athletes any more than we should assume that well-resourced athletes are only successful because of privilege. Both would be intellectually lazy conclusions.

The challenge is to understand context without abandoning standards.

A good talent-development system should be capable of recognizing the difference between an athlete who lacks ability and an athlete whose ability has not yet been adequately developed. Those are not always easy distinctions to make, which is precisely why talent identification requires experienced people rather than a checklist.

The Athlete Who Is Difficult to Develop

The same caution should apply when we assess behavior.

Anyone who has worked with young athletes will eventually encounter the exceptionally talented child who is also inconsistent, undisciplined or difficult to coach. It is tempting to conclude that the athlete is simply uncoachable, and there are certainly cases where behavior becomes incompatible with the requirements of a development program.

However, particularly during adolescence, I think we need to distinguish between describing present behavior and predicting future capacity. A 15-year-old is still developing psychologically. Self-regulation, identity, relationships with authority, coping strategies and emotional responses continue to develop throughout adolescence. The young athlete who reacts badly to correction may need firm boundaries, but it is also worth understanding what experiences have shaped that response. Have they previously experienced consistent expectations? Has anyone actually taught them how to respond to criticism? Have they been allowed to rely on natural ability for so long that they have never learned how to struggle?

A development environment should be able to work with some of these difficulties. Otherwise, we are not really developing; we are simply selecting young people who already possess the characteristics we prefer.

There must, however, be a limit to that argument.

Understanding why an athlete behaves in a particular way cannot become a permanent excuse for the behavior. Coaches can provide structure. Schools can educate. Parents can support. Psychologists and counselors can assist where appropriate. Organizations can create opportunities. Eventually the athlete has to respond.

There is a point at which potential has to begin converting into development. This is where I think youth sport sometimes becomes uncomfortable with personal responsibility. We understandably want to protect young people from being written off too early, but protecting potential does not require us to remove accountability. The athlete is part of the developmental process, not merely the recipient of it.

The Environment Develops the Athlete as Much as the Program Does

Talent development is often discussed as though all the important variables exist inside the athlete. The athlete has the talent, motivation, resilience, discipline and psychological characteristics, and the organization’s task is simply to extract them. I think that understanding is incomplete.

Henriksen et al. (2010), in their work on successful talent-development environments, demonstrated the importance of the wider environment surrounding athletes. Their research emphasized factors such as organizational culture, integration between sporting and non-sporting domains, supportive relationships and a long-term developmental perspective. More recent ecological approaches have continued to emphasize that athlete development emerges through interaction between the individual and their environment rather than through individual characteristics alone (Henriksen et al., 2023). This matters because athletes do not develop in laboratories.

They develop in families, schools, clubs, academies and communities. They develop under particular coaches and alongside particular peers. They experience organizational cultures that teach them, sometimes unintentionally, what success means, how failure is treated and whether asking for help is regarded as weakness.

A demanding environment can be extremely developmental when the athlete also has appropriate support. The same demands in a dysfunctional environment can produce something entirely different. Likewise, an environment that protects young athletes from every uncomfortable experience may appear supportive while failing to prepare them for the realities of higher-level competition.

Good development therefore requires judgment. There are times when an athlete needs support and times when they need to struggle. There are times when an explanation is necessary and times when a standard simply has to be met. There are moments when a coach should intervene and others when allowing the athlete to solve the problem independently may be more developmental.

No formula can make all of those decisions.

Development Should Leave the Person With More, Not Less

Research into environments combining sport and education reinforces the importance of considering the whole person. Thompson et al. (2022), in a systematic review examining sports schools, identified effects extending across athletic, academic, psychological, psychosocial and vocational domains. This is important because intensive sport during childhood and adolescence occupies years in which development is taking place across all of these areas simultaneously.

If a young athlete enters a development system at 12 and leaves at 18 without becoming a professional athlete, I do not believe those six years should be judged only according to whether a professional contract was obtained.

What happened to the person during those six years?

Did they receive an education? Did they become more disciplined? Did they learn to communicate? Did they learn how to work within a team, respond to disappointment and take responsibility? Did the sporting environment expand their understanding of what might be possible in their life?

Or did we develop one narrow ability at the expense of almost everything else?

This is where youth sport carries an ethical responsibility that professional sport does not carry in quite the same way. We are working with children and adolescents during formative developmental periods. We are encouraging them to invest time, identity, hope and enormous effort into an outcome that no responsible coach can guarantee.

We should pursue sporting excellence seriously. There is no value in pretending that a high-performance academy exists for anything other than developing athletes capable of reaching high levels of performance. But seriousness about performance does not require us to become careless about the person.

In fact, I would argue that the two should support one another.

What Are We Actually Trying to Identify?

Perhaps the mistake is that we sometimes expect talent identification to answer a question it cannot answer. We want to know which young athlete will become elite.

Science cannot give us that answer with certainty, and neither can the experienced coach. We can identify characteristics associated with successful development, observe performance, evaluate physical and technical qualities, consider psychological characteristics and examine developmental history. We can make better-informed decisions. We cannot remove uncertainty.

A recent umbrella review synthesizing 60 systematic reviews and meta-analyses again illustrates just how multidimensional athlete development is, identifying numerous determinants across the foundation and talent phases of development (Descheemaeker et al., 2025). The significance of findings such as these is not that talent identification is futile. It is that simplistic talent identification is inadequate.

Perhaps we therefore need to become more comfortable with revising our judgments. The athlete who appears ordinary at 13 may look completely different at 16. The athlete who dominates at 15 may reach 18 and find that the advantages on which they relied have disappeared. A young person initially regarded as difficult may respond exceptionally well when placed with the right coach. Another athlete may receive every available opportunity and simply not progress sufficiently. That is development.

There will always be uncertainty because we are dealing with people rather than fixed variables.

For me, talent tells us something about what is already visible. Potential concerns what may still be possible. Development is everything that happens between those two states, including what the athlete themselves chooses to do with the opportunities available to them. Performance is eventually the evidence of what that entire process is capable of producing under real conditions.

The responsibility of those involved in youth sport is therefore not merely to find talented children. It is to create systems capable of recognizing ability in different stages of refinement, understanding the circumstances that have shaped it, providing meaningful opportunities for it to develop and retaining sufficiently high standards that development continues to have a purpose.

Some young athletes will arrive polished. Others will arrive raw. Some will have benefited from years of excellent coaching, while others may have had very little. Some will develop early and others considerably later. None of this guarantees where they will ultimately finish.

The job is not to promise a future that we cannot predict. The job is to understand the athlete standing in front of us well enough to make the next stage of their development meaningful.

If we do that properly, the outcome should extend beyond whether that young person eventually becomes a professional athlete. The athlete who reaches the highest level should have been developed as a person along the way, and the athlete who does not reach that level should not emerge from the process believing that the years invested in sport have left them with nothing.

I would regard a development system that produces professional athletes while unnecessarily narrowing the futures of everyone else as difficult to describe as successful.

The more useful question is therefore not simply how talented a young athlete appears to be today. It is what that athlete may be capable of becoming when ability, education, opportunity, psychology, environment and personal responsibility are allowed to interact over time. We may never be able to predict that perfectly. Perhaps we should not expect to. But we can become considerably better at developing it.

References

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