THE OPINION OF YOUTH SOCCER COACHES ABOUT TALENT SELECTION FOR SOCCER

Society and clubs invest a lot of effort, time and money to discover young people who have the potential to develop into top athletes. But, there are still many questions about a universal theoretical approach, agreed terminology and possible characteristics of talent that would bring practical benefit.The purpose of this paper is to clarify the essence of talent concept in sports and to evaluate the degree of agreement between the opinions of Serbian youth soccer coaches on the important issues of detection, identification and selection of talented soccer players in comparison with other researches. 161 youth soccer coaches with a high level of competence participated in the survey.The word talent is often heard in everyday speech to emphasize the qualities or skills of a young person who achieves above-average results in a certain field. There is no universal definition of talent. Over time, talent concept expanded and dynamized, so that today talent is approached multidimensionally, assessed holistically, and a conclusion is reached with a certain degree of probability. Coaches traditionally select players based on personal taste, observing movement patterns in the game and using their intuition based on experience, and using test results to monitor changes in morphological characteristics and motor skills. In addition to the existence of a disposition for the development of appropriate abilities, strong motivation and a favorable environment with an optimal training process are needed to realize the talent according to the planned outcome in the form of a competitive result. A reliable judgment about the ultimate range of a talented athlete is hindered by intense developmental changes in childhood and youth, due to which talent changes its structure. Further research should be focused on discovering the main and secondary components of giftedness, their interconnections, influences and changes during childhood and youth. This topic raises many questions such as: How not to stifle the individuality of talent? Would the discovery of the undiscovered make the game of soccer lose its charm?