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You know ball. However, I would say that in football, there's a constant pattern of youth players who are physically dominant on U-16/18/21 teams (black, white, and hispanic) failing to kick on after that peak. It's kind of priced into football youth development in a way it isn't in American football. Also, breaking through early and playing a ton of minutes is a recipe for being an injury disaster in your late 20s, as the example of Rooney (or Jack Wilshere, or Gareth Bale - btw I disagree with your assessment of Rooney, he went to United at 18 and was their top league scorer in his first season) shows; late-blooming players often have much longer peaks because by the time they reach that peak of game intelligence their body is still able to handle it. Helps if you're in Spain/France and thus doped to the gills, of course.
Yeah, Rooney is not the clearest example as he probably matured faster than most in his age group, and he was physically capable enough at 16 to play with adults. But as you say, he kept on developing mentally. He wasn't just his physicality and I'd argue that many of his best performances didn't even revolve around his goal scoring ability which is what defined his earlier years.
And whilst it is of course true that youth stars of all stripes don't always live up to the hype, there's a difference between talent like, for example, Januzaj and the examples I gave. Whilst Januzaj had a lot of hype, he ended up being a middling player at the top level. That's a far cry from never even making it to the top level after being sandwiched in accolades between Toni Kroos and Bojan at 17 like Macauley Chrisantus. Not that a professional career in 2nd division football is a failure by any means. But it's certainly not living up to the imagined potential.
Sure, I agree with the points you're making. I'm just trying to say that these prospects come and go every year, every top club's fans are hyped up about their academy players, or some other academy prospect they want to sign, and the majority of them go the Januzaj route. Some are cut early, some make it into their early twenties and then go to Bremen or Getafe or Tottenham, and a few make it to be stars, but always far fewer than fans expect in a given season.
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In every sport there's just always going to be certain styles that are better suited to being the dominant athlete on the pitch and absolutely shellacking people you are better than, but that are less viable against other professional-tier players. You can argue about why so many resources are devoted to players/why they aren't being taught how to function better as part of the professional metagame, but there's always going to be an issue where coaches are more concerned with winning the current age-level game instead of developing players to best function at the top level.
There's plenty of American Football players who are super dominant at the CFB level but don't have the right attributes or game style to thrive in the parity-driven NFL. Tim Tebow's the classic example of that where his physical running style was viable against COllegiate defenders but was never going to last against pro competition.
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