He's eight, tiny and he'll beat you...

Eight-year-old Argentinian prodigy could be next Lionel Messi
• Claudio Nancufil said to be a media sensation
• Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético show interest

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFY7HQpFlsk#t=68"]CLAUDIO GABRIEL ÑANCUFIL NUEVO CRACK ARGENTINO! - YouTube[/ame]

An eight-year-old prodigy from the southern Andes has been identified as potentially the next Lionel Messi.

Claudio Nancufil, though small for his age, has become a media sensation since emerging as an unusual talent at the modest Martín Güemes club in the ski resort of Bariloche in Argentina.

"As soon as he started to play [aged four] he was already different from all the rest of his playmates with regards to technique," the club president Marcelo Ernalz said.

"How he takes the ball stuck to his foot, brakes, stops, kicks, scores, shoots on goal, from when he was little he had all these distinct qualities."

Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid have shown interest and the boy could go to Spain for trials in the New Year, according to the Madrid newspaper El Confidencial.

Manuel Otero, manager of a Barcelona-based PR agency Sueños Comunicaciones (dreams communications), visited the Nancufil family in Bariloche when he heard of Claudio's talent and offered to represent them.

"After the Christmas holidays, 'Claudito' will go to try out with these three Spanish teams and then we'll see what each of them offers us," said Otero.

"We've had an invitation from River Plate for him to train for a week with them," Otero added in a report in El Confidencial.

"[The family] are not closing any doors and England could also be a great destination for the player."

"We're happy because both the kid and his family deserve an opportunity like this," Ernalz told Argentina's Cadena 3 in a recent interview.

"He's physically small and had the same growth problems detected in Messi when he was little, and he's getting hormone treatment."

His mother Viviana said Claudio, who is from a humble background with origins in the Mapuche Indians of the southern Andean mountain range, could not explain how he played.

"We asked him, how do you do that? And he said: 'I don't know. I just get it in my head and my feet move on their own. It's like that. I don't know how I play like that. My legs just go.' That's what he told us. We would kid him about it, we'd say that he ran by remote control."

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/nov/27/claudio-nancufil-lionel-messi-argentina

Hopefully everyone leaves him along and he stays in Argentina.

 

I thought Ryan Gauld was the next Messi?

 

Everyone seem to be the "next Messi" these days. It's pointless judging players at that age. Can't make proper judgements till they're 16-17.

 

Could he do it on a cold night in Stoke against 10 year olds though?

 

ffs, when I was that age I was like the white pele !!

and look at me now.. fat and *.

 

Its all down to square cube law. The smaller you are, the more faster and mobile you'll be relative to your size. Which is what can give many people the false impression that every good young player will be the next best thing.

 

maybe.
but I put my demise down to smoking in primary 6 :icon_mrgreen:

 

Giving him growth hormones because he's small at age 8?

What the *?! I was * tiny until I was 14 and by 21 I'm just shy of 6 foot. At 8 you could probably have stepped on me and not even noticed I was so small, give him a chance to grow!

 

Wee dude looks like he belongs in a Super Mario Bros. game :icon_mrgreen:

 

If he can jump like Mario then we should sign him up right away.

Then we might finally have somebody to get on the end of our * crosses and corners. :smiley-laughing002:

 

:smiley-laughing002::smiley-laughing002::smiley-laughing002::smiley-laughing002:

At least wee Mario and mad Efe have something in common - they are both fond of the pipe :icon_mrgreen:

 

To be fair they knew about Messi when he was that age too.

 

You could make the same argument about the kids who are supposed to be tackling him though: if this wonder kid is small now and he has faster reflexes than when he'll be older (due to electrical impulses taking less time to travel up and down his limbs: from receptors, to the CNS and then to his muscles) then surely so do the other kids he's playing with, so they should be able to react quickly and tackle him just as easily as adults would against other adults.

 

Just pump him full of HGH and he'll be grand.

 

Everyone has the same reaction time i.e 0.1s. Ball control can be learned by anyone whose willing to put in the time and effort. However, being able to read the game; see the pass, or visualise the flight of the ball long before it comes to you. Requires some level of natural ability. Something Gauld has, but Watt doesn't.

 

Get him some shorts that fit him!

 

That is frightening. The finish at 3.50 minutes. 8 years old :smiley-laughing002:

We need to get kids in this country playing at that age if we want to progress as a footballing nation. Never mind about coaching them just get the ball at their feet and let them do the rest. When they are older they can be coached.

 

Not true at all. Age is the obvious biggest factor: OAP's will have far worse reactions than young adults and children. The length of your limbs and height matters too, go look up the reflex arc (I summarised it very briefly in my last post). Other people like some computer gamers have been shown to have increased response times and faster reflexes, for example.

That '0.1 s' figure is a rough average for children/young adults. It's rounded up or down to '0.1 s' quite often, so if you're measuring individuals' reflexes, 0.09 s, 0.14 s, 0.12s might all be measured for different people, but then rounded to one decimal place, i.e. 0.1 s.

'0.1 s' is an accurate, but imprecise value (for the scientists and mathematicians out there).

 

He seems like a good wee player. Hope he sticks at it.
Those shorts though!

He looked offside to me :smiley-laughing002:

Anyone remember another "wonderkid" video from a couple of year back? He had all the tricks in the book apart from passing the ball. Wonder what happened to him.