sounds like a case of the good old arguing over the definition of words. You seem to interpret "successful" as "technically successful", that is having achieved

sounds like a case of the good old arguing over the definition of words. You seem to interpret "successful" as "technically successful", that is having achieved success at one point, whereas others might be more inclined to interpret it as "skilled" or "consistently successful" (which is to say, there isn't actually a real disagreement here, except over how language is parsed)