Take a look at the list of junior Wimbledon champions and you will quickly see a pattern emerging. For every future Grand Slam winner like Roger Federer or Caroline Wozniacki, there are numerous names that not even a tennis aficionado would recognise.

All the players on the list were among the very best juniors in the world and tipped for stardom, yet not that many actually went on to make it.

The same is true of all sports, most of all in football, where there is the highest number of people chasing the same dream. Everybody knows that only a minuscule proportion of those tipped for greatness will entirely fulfil their rich potential the challenge is identifying who will.

If it were simply a question of quantifiable factors like talent, then the process would be far simpler. It would mean that those predicted England teams for World Cups years in the future would be accurate, rather than amusingly wide of the mark and featuring names like Michael...

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Next Big Thing: How to spot the Next Big Thing - The Athletic