Yet spend 20 minutes in the company of Manchester United’s young tyro and his hunger is so evident that it becomes clear he simply takes it all in his stride. The hurdles to come will inevitably become more awkward to vault, but Danny Welbeck shows no sign of tripping up.
“I’m not seeing it as, ‘Whoa, I’ve got to this stage’, or anything like that,” he said. “You just have to take it as it comes, like when you’re playing for the Under-18s. I want to keep improving because I know there are no limits.
“In football, you don’t want to put a limit on anything. You don’t want to be happy with where you’re at. “If you think of players like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, they score goals and break records and they just want to keep breaking them. They don’t want to stop there.
“That’s how everyone should feel. You play your football, you score a goal and you want to score another.”There are lots of reasons why Welbeck is emerging as a real contender, knocking Dimitar Berbatov, Michael Owen and maybe even Javier Hernandez down the pecking order at Old Trafford in the process.
His eye for goal – he has scored five in eight appearances this season – and technical ability are underpinned by an outlook mature beyond his 20 years. Being schooled the United way has granted him a privileged upbringing. Part of his fearless approach, he says, is because he plays “the game, not the occasion”.