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The Dele-José story is far from over but the fear is Alli may have peaked at 21 | Barney Ronay

26-Sep-2020 07:00:09 | The Guardian

Tottenham midfielder’s talent shone brightly against Real Madrid three years ago – but when Mourinho starts calling you talented you need to worry

Last year Sport England announced it would be spending £85m on The Talent Plan For England. The idea behind the Talent Plan is to create “the world’s best talent plan” – a shoot-for-the-moon ambition that becomes more achievable if you accept the rather pedantic objection that a Talent Plan is something you’ve just made up, and thus, technically, nobody else in the world has one anyway.

What is certain is that the Talent Plan has a lot to say about talent, so much that its 35-page outline mentions it 258 times in total. This is the big takeaway from the Talent Plan: talent is definitely very important. To be clear, nobody here is suggesting we don’t care about talent. It is a doubly interesting read given one unarguable truth about talent is that nobody seems to know exactly how it works. It has even become fashionable in coaching circles to say talent is overrated, that it is a kind of chimera.