An interesting story of your friend - whilst he was a player, was there a lot of pressure to achieve high standards and behave a certain way?

I used to play a lot with a youngster called Elliot (and his dad) and another player called Jon (I called him "The Tramp" because he had nowhere to live and stayed with me for a while). Jon had been trained in Italy (Piacenza if my memory's correct) and was probably the best forward I ever played with - Italian training was all about positioning (they'd run around the pitch without a ball to make sure they were in the correct place) - it sounds really boring but I don't know why he didn't progress. He was brilliant.

Elliot's a different story - he was amazing and was captain of Bournemouth's reserves. Many of his team mates went on to play in the Premier League and he was better than many of them. But the training and the lifestyle was incredibly intense. He was 17 years old (their youngest ever captain) and he wanted to enjoy being young. They wanted him to do everything a certain way - they were essentially telling him how to live his life. He didn't want this and gave up - I always wonder where his talent would have taken him. He would have been in Bournemouth's Premier League team if he'd stuck with it and it would've been surreal to watch him make the big time, knowing that I'd nutmegged him and scored against him from the half way line 🤣 But he chose a different life and has been very happy in it.