On technical ability maybe. His fitness and stamina probably not.
Stamina can be built, fitness sadly cannot... at least, not to get to the high level of fitness needed to be an elite athlete.
As a player I was told often that technically I could play at senior football level and for 1/2 a season in the mid 1980's I trained with Leyton-Wingate, then in the Vauxhall Opel league. They were promoted to the Premier the year I joined ahead of teams like Woking, Grays, Boreham Wood, Basildon, Leatherhead, Oxford City, Billericay and Stevenage - so it was a decent standard. The year before, they got to the first round of the FA Cup and lost 2-0 to Swansea at the old Vetch Field.
There were players there who - ability wise - could have all played in the football league. In fact, pretty much all of them had been with London clubs like Charlton, Arsenal, Crystal Palace and West Ham. However, it was either fitness or mental strength that was their barrier.
Fitness did for me. I got as fit as I could get, but it was never fit enough. I had back issues (had done since I was 21) and was not quite quick enough either... probably as quick as I could be, but not to the level needed. Niggling injuries always held me back. In the end, I gave it best and came back to the local league (Borough Comb).
Then, about 5 years ago, a chiropractor explained that my spine was slightly out of alignment and had a slight twist. He explained that I had almost certainly been born that way and I asked if that was why I could never get super fit as a younger man? He said it probably was.
So a promising career as a budding footballer, destined to become a future International (obviously!), was ended by a quirk undetected from birth. That clearly is the reason I never made it.
Or, could it be, as the late John Adams once said to me... "There's only one thing stopping that lad becoming a world class player, and that's a complete lack of ability".
Nah. I'll stick to the spine story if that's ok...