A Quote by Matt Doherty
You can be 19 or 20 and playing reserve team football, be able to say 'I played at,' say, 'Manchester United,' even though you have no actual first team appearances. But there are 19- and 20-year-olds at League Two level with 100 appearances under their belts. I know which one I'd rather be.
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In my day, 20-year-olds already had 150 first-team appearances under their belts.
If I was 19, 20, 18, and I had the chance to play with first-team players of Manchester United, I will definitely try to take my chance.
All my career I have done that, worked with talents, improving 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds.
I feel like a lot of teenagers have typically been played by 25 year olds, and even 30 year olds. It's nice that I'm playing a little bit more to my age, although from 15 to 19 are pretty progressive years.
Mark Jackson played 19, 20 years in the NBA. Shouldn't even have probably been in the league, and he's the third-ranked assist guy in the NBA. But you describe his game: Can he jump? No, not really. How's his outside shot? Eh, it's inconsistent. Can he defend? Nah, he can't stay in front of guys. And he played 19 years!
It's very difficult to pick a 17-year-old who's had 10 minutes of first-team football. You're talking about replacing senior players with some 17-year-olds who haven't played Premier League football.
We grew up in an age of playing reserve team football at the stadium. If the first team were playing away, you'd be playing at home, at Highbury, and there would be one man and his dog there. Even though you'd psych yourself up, you still don't get that push.
My first year of pro ball I played in the Northwest league and made the all-star team, and the next year I played I led the team in hitting and was third or fifth in the league.
If I were involved with the NBA, I wouldn't want a 19-year-old or a 20-year-old kid to bring into all the travel and all the problems that exist in the NBA. I would want a much more mature kid. I would want a kid that maybe I've been watching on another team, and now he's 21, 22 years old instead of 18 or 19, and I might trade for that kid.
When I was watching 19 and 20-year-olds go through this, dropping out of college to become famous on the Internet, I saw that it can go well but it can also go poorly, and usually it'll be a mix of those two things.
I remember the first time I played the triple-A Yankees when I was 20 years old, and Darryl Strawberry was on that team. It was the first time I actually got goose bumps playing against another team.
I want to be playing competitive first-team football every week and not reserve team football.
Once you have had 10 seasons at this level, the next season is not going to be so different. For a young player with only 20 appearances in the Premier League there is an opportunity to improve.
I don't know how many 19 year-olds are playing in the Championship, there's certainly not any playing in the Premiership. It depends on what type of character you are really.
When I first started playing in a youth football league, I was the worst kid on the team. I quit the first year. And then the next year, I was still the worst kid - I didn't even play.
Even though I support the blue side of Manchester's football heritage, I don't really mind that wherever I go in the world it's not Manchester City that starts the conversation. 'Ah, yes, Manchester United,' is the response when I say where I come from. It's commonplace everywhere - in Europe, Africa, Asia and even the U.S.
