Quite often in football the amount of talent a young player has does not guarantee their careers will be a roaring success.
Just as important, if not more so, is having the maturity to make key off-field decisions at the right times – and having people around you to issue sage advice when needed.
Sadly for one former Liverpool player, it seems such responsible guides were absent when the opportunity for big move to Merseyside presented itself.
Gabriel Paletta was a certified wonderkid, having made a name for himself in South America as part of the Argentina u20s side which won the FIFA World Youth Championship in 2005.
That team also starred a couple of young chaps named Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero. They turned out to be pretty handy at football.
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The feeling was that Paletta was on a similar trajectory, and therefore it was no great surprise when he was unveiled as a Liverpool recruit in February 2006, before joining up with the team that summer.
He had only become a regular for hometown club – the somewhat aptly-named Banfield – the previous year, but clearly Rafa Benitez was convinced enough to sign the giant 20-year-old for £2m.
It was part of the Spaniard's plan to build a young first team squad in a bid to ensure the club had a bright future while being able to compete in the moment.
"You can plan for two or three years down the line but you need to win now," he said.
"In my opinion, though, you can do both. Agger, Mohamed Sissoko, Xabi Alonso, even Steven Gerrard, are all young players who can deliver today and improve for the future."
Before he had even played a game for Liverpool, though, there were already suggestions that Paletta made the wrong choice by snubbing a move to River Plate for his big Premier League adventure.
As the BBC's South American football expert Tim Vickery warned at the time, the fast track for a player like Paletta is not always the right one.
"Paletta is one of those complicated South American cases of a player whose registration is not wholly owned by a club," he wrote.
"There are other investors involved, who typically prefer short-term profit to long term career development.
"He seemed certain to join local giants River Plate, who even reserved the number six shirt for him.
"In purely football terms, joining River is the obvious step to take. He would learn about the pressures of being with a big club. He would have to cope with the fact that River's expansive style of play can leave their defenders exposed.
"And he could do all of this in his home environment, while preparing himself for the move to Europe.
"Instead he has skipped a stage. Finance has won over football. With just a year behind him Paletta has opted to move to a country with a different culture, language and football."
As it turned out, Vickery's warnings turned out to be good advice that was not taken.
Paletta played just eight times for Liverpool – three in the league – in his one and only season with the club before leaving, ironically, to join River Plate.
His career later took him to Italy, the homeland of his great-grandfather, playing for Parma where his performances were so strong that he earned three international caps for the Azzurri.
Paletta even moved to AC Milan for a three-year spell on the books at San Siro, meaning he has the distinction of playing for playing for two of Europe's most decorated clubs – but at a time when neither were at the height of their powers.
After a brief spell in China, the Argentine is now back in Italy playing for Monza at the age of 36, and featured in the 4-0 victory over SPAL on Saturday.
