Academy boss Wilcox says youngsters should experience real world
“IT’S very exciting. We’re only at the start of our journey. This is a new start, a new project. This is a fresh start for everybody.”
Jason Wilcox is keen to thank former mentors Mark Allen, Rodolfo Borrell and Scott Sellars for their work in making both himself and the City academy what they are today.
It is impossible, however, as he enthusiastically explains the changes rippling through the Etihad Campus, not to see the new academy director’s stamp on what is a stark departure for the club.
A spell of trying to oust Chelsea as the dominant force and become a winning machine in youth football has brought terrific results across the age groups but ultimately yielded three FA Youth Cup final defeats and no first-team players.
With a hierarchy desperate to produce homegrown stars and nearly three years having passed since the £200m training ground was opened, Wilcox hasn’t so much acknowledged the elephant in the room but jumped on its back in a bid to get rid of it.
The view is that leaving kids to want for nothing in the stateof-the-art complex actually leaves them wanting when it matters, so the safety nets have been dismantled in an attempt to create players out of their struggles.
“When I looked at the winning percentages across the board from U9s to U23s we were winning 80 per cent of games and losing 10pc, and that’s not reality,” said Wilcox.
“So if I say we have to understand the reality and bring that we have to allow the kids to live in it because this place is not the reality. Not every Premier League club has got this, never mind anywhere else. We have to bring some reality.
“Can we remember winning the Under-18s league two years ago? No-one cares. I was the coach and no-one cares.
“At that moment in time it was really important, and important to me, but it’s not more important than getting the right challenges for our players and looking at individuals.
“We will always be competitive when we go age to age and will be competitive when we need to be but we have to look at it on an individual basis now.
“We want to compete in certain tournaments – the FA Youth Cup, the youth Champions League – but winning leagues and titles is not a marker of success. It is a byproduct of your development programme, of good recruitment and good staff.
“We have to get the boys in this process of evaluating and learning and you don’t learn when you’re winning 80 or 90 per cent of your games.
“At the crucial times I’m putting the expectation on them but individually I have to look at the challenges for each individual and try to give them that.”
Chances are scant in a top Premier League academy and youngsters and coaches are fighting against increases in the money pouring into the league, globalisation of the game and the average age that players are breaking through into first teams.
Phil Foden may well have become a first-team regular as recently as ten years ago at City when the last batch of academy graduates were breaking into the team, but the 800 kids at the club today have to be exceptional in both senses of the word to fulfil their dream.
There have been myriad reasons for the production line at the Etihad grinding to a halt, from first-team managers not seeing youth as a priority to the takeover transforming the club into a completely different entity.
As Wilcox puts it: “Man City then would be a club that we would now send one of our players on loan.”
Change, while not perhaps as drastic, has not been limited to City either.
Across the league, the influx of money into an increasingly global top flight has meant an academy player will likely have to wait until their teenage years have passed before they are given regular game time at a top club.
“It has to be a phenomenon now, something unbelievable or a circumstance, a first-team squad that is decimated by illness or injury to give someone an opportunity, a bit like Marcus [Rashford].
“Nobody accepts it, I don’t accept it. But it’s the reality.
“I’m still desperate to see the boys play but I’m also realistic so the boys have always got to have that aim.
“They’ve always got to be ready. An opportunity will arise at some point and they’ve got to be ready to take it.
“Our job is to get them in the right shape, the right frame of mind, the right tactical level, the right physical shape and ultimately temperament is a big thing.
“You never quite know until you shove them in that arena because they can be the best players in the 23s but you put them in the first-team arena and some thrive on the pressure and some crumble.”