Edge: Leadership Secrets from Footballs’s Top Thinkers. Ben Lyttleton

       PROLOGUE

      As soon as I took the call, I knew it was a great idea. It was summer 2014 and I had just spoken to Marcus Christenson, Football Editor at the Guardian newspaper. His plan was to tap into the football expertise of his global network and publish a piece called ‘Next Generation’. It would identify the top 60 players around the world aged 17 or below.

      The feature would run every year, and readers would be able to track previously listed players and check on their progress. It was also quite brave, because if, in three years, say, 55 of the 60 players named had dropped out of football, no one would look too clever.

      He asked me to come up with two players who were based in France. I have always been enchanted by French football and have written extensively about the game there. But I did not know all that much about the next generation, and when it came to that age group, it was more like the generation after next.

      I called up some of my contacts in the French game and they helped me draw up a shortlist of five names. I had to narrow it down. I looked at video footage of the players but that didn’t help; they all played in different positions anyway. So I went back to Marcus and asked what he wanted. Was it the most talented players? Or the ones most likely to make it? He wanted both: basically, a feature that would become an annual celebration of the Guardian’s football knowledge pool. ‘We just want to get it right,’ he said.

      This made me think. Would the most talented players be the ones most likely to make it? I asked a friend, a Premier League scout whose speciality was spotting youth-team players in northern France. ‘Not at all,’ he replied. He was looking for players who influence games, whatever their position. This is not just a matter of technique or skill; it’s about working off the ball, and how they react to losing the ball.

      So what is he looking for? ‘Resilience,’ he said. Most scouts focus on the six seconds after a player loses the ball to check for reaction, but my friend keeps an eye on them for ten minutes. One youngster missed a chance to score and spent the rest of the half shaking his head and hitting his thigh in disgust with himself. He was crossed off the list. ‘He was nervous when he next got the ball and he won’t grow out of that.’

      He also talked about adaptability: how a player fits in socially with those around him, and extrapolated that to the potential new contexts that might await him. It was also important that he had a general respect for team-mates and the coach, and a simple enjoyment of the game. ‘You can spot the ones who don’t want to be there a mile off.’ There is a lot more to his job than interpreting body language and the odd behavioural trait. But he made it clear just how many aspects there are to assessing talent.

      This was my chance to have a go at it. I had five players whose talent was not in question. Four had been capped by France at Under-17 level, and they were all playing in academies with a good record of bringing players through: Toulouse, Lens, Valenciennes, Rennes and Paris Saint-Germain. I had to narrow