Seeing potential in someone can become hope which becomes an expectation. That expectation is a beautiful thing that turns into fear over that someone, a fear that screams they can't fail to meet your expectations because you can't take the disappointment.

Fans, players, coaches, media and almost everyone involved in football behave in two certain ways when it comes to some players having "potential"

1- The One-Sided Contract

Once a player is labelled the next great thing, everyone involved signs a one-sided contract with said player which states that meeting those expectations is the player's future, everything else is a failure.

This comes without any consent from the player. In fact, even the player tries to let you know that you shouldn't put all of that on him. A player would say something like "players are different", "I don't want like insert name", and "no one knows what the future hides", all those statements and more. Hints to politely imply that you shouldn't be putting so much pressure on these players. Yet, you hear that and think "Oh, he's so humble".

2- The Dehumanization of The Player

The player no longer becomes a human, he becomes a "potential". A potential that's progress and success is determined by comparison to how close it is to the player or expectation you have set, whether that player is living a happy or miserable life. This expectation can become so strong that you straight-up hate the current version of the player, taking away his right as a human to make a mistake or get affected by circumstances.

These "potentials" have a hundred things affecting their career. They could go to a club where they don't evolve, you hate that because it takes away from the time that he has to become the next Messi.

In one of football's best books, The Next Big Thing: How Football's Wonderkids Get Left Behind, Ryan Baldi told the stories of 15 different players who failed to meet their potential. Some of them had their home life destroyed by divorce, like Andy van der Meyde. Some because of an early injury, like Ben Thornley, one of the forgotten players of Manchester United's class of 92. Some because they suffered since no one at the club managed to plan their development and kept loaning them until they forgot all about football like John Bostock. Also, some simply couldn't comprehend the big move to a top club like Liverpool's Adam Morgan.

Most of these names you don't recognize because they didn't meet their "potential", just like how Bojan is already forgotten about. None of them said directly that they failed in big part thanks to people's expectations, yet it was clear in their words.

Thornley spoke about how his injury time was difficult as he watched his teammates do so well while he was still at the gym doing exhausting and boring exercises. He had anxiety thinking about whether he'd still play well upon returning because of how long those rehabilitation exercises took. When a player thinks that way, the next step is thinking about whether it is even worth it. You can feel the pressure in his words because his situation would have been normal and he'd have gone through his injury normally if you don't add expectations into the mix.

Saying that those huge, unfounded expectations led to their failures would be an admission of failure. This is why "potential" is a cursed word.

Train Your Mind

In his book, Train Your Mind for Athletic Success: Mental Preparation to Achieve Your Sports Goals PhD holder, Jim Taylor talked about how expectations are the main reason behind failure in his article, The Burden of Expectation: Another Lesson from Mikaela. He says that the worst sentence you could tell a young player is "I am certain you will be successful" because even if that player's success is inevitable, you still take away a big part of their freedom and inner peace as they achieve that success.

Once a lot of people set up those standards of success for these players, standards that are only in those people's minds, if anything wrong happens that deviates from the course of such success, the player would think that there's something wrong that he did automatically. Such a sentence would destroy an athlete if he was the greatest athlete in history, and even if he did succeed it would have put pressure that wasn't remotely necessary.

Taylor advises athletes to shut up those voices even if it cost them their affection because even if they do succeed, it would have actually made them less successful than they could have been. The other reason is that this sentence is emotional blackmail.

I will tell you that "you will be the next Messi" and all you could do is thank me for my high opinion of you despite that opinion attaching a lot of pressure on your mind. You have to thank me for that because any other response would make you egotistical, smug, and straight-up rude. There's no exit. This is made worse by the fact that potential and success can only be measured after a career ends.

After your career ends and you have done all you could to succeed, you could look back and honestly say whether you succeeded or failed, whether you could have done more or not, after, not before.

In Conclusion

Once you take out that cursed word of potential, once you stop comparing one player to another, you could actually look at and label many careers as successful, even the ones you consider absolute failures. Yes, many players with "potential" didn't have a career as illustrious as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, but who said it needed to be?

Why can't players just have their careers by enjoying victory when they win and suffering defeat when they lose? Why does every player have to win a World Cup, four UEFA Champions League titles, ten league titles and countless cups before fans label them successful? Why does a player have to play in a certain league or a certain team to be labelled good by the fans? Why can't they just enjoy where they are? And finally, why are they so forced by expectations to have a better career than some other player?

Is the is a problem with the players or the fans?