The Millwall kids are alright... but it’s a dogfight to keep them all
NO club will gauge the health of its academy on a successful year in the FA Youth Cup but for the casual observer the prestigious competition is always a useful barometer.
Leeds United have reached the final for the first time this century and face Manchester City, a consistent force since the Abu Dhabi takeover. They are elite academies, among 26 in English football bestowed with Category One status, but this season’s Youth Cup will go down as something of a triumph for those fighting for recognition in the undergrowth.
Swindon Town, a Cat Three academy, reached the last eight, beating Manchester United along the way, and two clubs from Cat Two made the last four.
Bristol City went down 1-0 at Manchester City and Millwall lost in a 4-3 thriller at Elland Road on Thursday in front of 10,500, a bigger crowd than saw the first team playing at Rotherham, in the Championship, two days earlier.
Millwall have won the Youth Cup twice — in 1979 and 1991 — although the landscape has changed greatly since.
Once they would compete for schoolboy talent with neighbours Crystal Palace, Charlton and West Ham, and sometimes the wealthiest London clubs.
Then came northern giants Manchester United, City and Liverpool, moving on to their turf, tapping into London’s demographic, with a greater ethnic diversity than other British cities producing different footballers.
Now ambitious clubs with Cat One status like Brighton, Norwich and Southampton are visibly active in the south of the capital, such is its reputation as a hotbed of talent. Recruit, develop, sell, is football’s new mantra.
‘The challenge gets bigger each year,’ admits Millwall’s academy director Scott Fitzgerald, who won a Republic of Ireland B cap. ‘First recruitment, then retaining those players for our first team. We know we are in a dogfight.
‘We have clubs from all round the country, every weekend, looking at players. If they’re waiting for us to reach the Youth Cup semi-final they’re probably not doing their jobs very well. They should have picked these up years ago.
‘In my experience, they’re out there watching games, writing reports and aware of all our players from nine, 10 and 11 years of age. I don’t think someone pops out of the sky at 16 any more.’
Cat One academies can sign players from anywhere in the country, often making the move attractive with housing and a private education, with levels of compensation baked into the EPPP (Elite Player Performance Plan) since 2012.
In 2019, Manchester City raided Millwall for 16-year-old Sam Edozie, who was sold to Southampton, three years later, for £10million. One year before, Darko Gyabi left Millwall for City at 14 and moved to Leeds for £5m when Kalvin Phillips went the other way. Gyabi is now on loan at Plymouth, fighting against Millwall to survive in the Championship.
In 2022, Zak Lovelace left Millwall for Rangers at 16. Lovelace could have played in this Youth Cup team. ‘We don’t want to be a selling club and there’s no pressure from above, ever,’ says Fitzgerald. ‘But once registration ends they can move and, even though you’re getting compensation, it doesn’t replace the feeling you get to see that player running out at the Den.’
Academies unable to offer financial incentives will talk of enhanced opportunities. They will talk about ‘environment’ and ‘pathways’. The real mark of success is always those players who break into the first team and go on to make a living from football.
For Millwall, it helps to see academy graduates such as Billy Mitchell, Danny McNamara and Romain Esse in and around the first team. ‘Not only good players but fantastic people,’ says Fitzgerald with a flush of pride.
THERE are different routes to the Premier League. Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka are shining examples of what the EPPP’s elite academies have produced. Equally, against Belgium last month, Gareth Southgate selected players who came from the academies of Hereford, Exeter and Barnsley. There were two from Charlton, Joe Gomez and Ezri Konsa.
Perhaps one or two from this Millwall crop can achieve similar progress. The captain Josh Stephenson is a left-sided centre half, a mainstay of the team, and Kavalli Heywood has been prolific in the absence of Frankie Baker, who has been injured. Both Stephenson and Heywood scored at Leeds.
They did not become the first Cat Two side to make the Youth Cup final since categorisation more than a decade ago, but they had a memorable run, beating Chelsea in the quarter-finals.
‘Nights when the boys get to be like first-team players,’ said Millwall Under 18s coach Larry McAvoy. ‘Where the result means more than the performance. Games in the stadium, under the lights, in front of crowds. Some of them boys will never get that chance again, because they won’t all make it but you get a glimpse of what it’s like.’
For the coaches, too, some reward in a season spent doing largely unheralded work, and Millwall’s U18s are still in the hunt for a trophy, with a League Cup final against Swansea at the Den, on Wednesday week.