Over the years I have read a number or articles and books discussing talent in sports, as probably most of you have too. Things change. Recently I discovered that I had misunderstood what sport scientists now mean when they say "talent." See https://tip.duke.edu/node/1245 There are now about 4 different athletic development models and the LTAD model is not the latest. Many people use "talent" to refer to natural gifts that some lucky persons are born with. Like for instance some people are born taller, faster, or stronger than others. "Good genes" is a common phrase. Recently sport scientists refer to the superior athletic abilities of people prior to training as giftedness, but not talent. The thinking is that talent appears after athletes begin to train and the definition of talent is not sport specific, but rather refers to the individual's rate of development compared to the peer group. In other words you start to train a group of 100 children, all novices. Some are better than others at the start of training, but they are not talented. They are gifted. At the end of a period of time, let's assume 3 months, the children will have improved at different rates for a complex variety of factors, some unknown. The talented children are the 5 or 10 children who improved the most over the period, regardless of their current playing ability compared to the other children. So talented players are those who have a faster rate of development. How many coaches and clubs select youth players based on the rate of development? Until recently probably effectively no one. Obviously to do so you have to compare personal ability at the beginning of the training to personal ability at the end of training. But tryouts typically only look at current ability, so a player's rate of improvement cannot be objectively evaluated at the tryout. The use of professional scouts to follow youth over a number of years during their development starts to make sense as a tool to identify talent for professional teams and colleges. If you are interested in learning more, the book I am currently reading is Developing Sport Expertise, Researchers and Coaches Put Theory into Practice (Routlege, 2013 2d ed.) edited by D. Farrow, J. Baker and C. MacMahon.
I got home from playing the other night and was taking off my gear in front of the computer in the office. My wife walks into the office. Wife: Eww, your socks stink? Me: That's talent you smell, honey.