STARLETS’ CHALLENGE
MICHAEL CALLANDER EXAMINES THE DIFFICULTIES FOR YOUNG PLAYERS TO MAKE THEIR MARK ON HOME TURF…
The search for game time
THE Premier League, and the resulting revenue of its global broadcasting, has presented many challenges to English football. Youth development is just one of them.
The Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) was instigated in 2011 and was eventually accepted by all 72 Football League clubs.
It aimed to strengthen English academy-level football by creating reating a hierarchy of academies with Premier emier League clubs, understandably, y, at the top.
The Premier League e claimed it wanted to, among other her things, increase the number and quality of home-grown players rs playing top-flight football, improve prove coaching quality, help clubs foster ter links with local schools to help young players get the best football ootball and academic education tion (St Bede’s College has s a well-publicised affiliation with Manchester City) and allow Category 1 academies to recruit talent from further afield.
The EPPP introduced ced a fixed range of fees to be paid by clubs in compensation n for the services of any player under 17.
Between 12-16, this annual fee ranges from £12,500 to £40,000 depending on the academy categories of the clubs involved in the transfer (ranging from 1-4 (best-worst) for Premier L League and Football League clubs). If Manch Manchester United took an interest in a 14-year-old at Newport C County, they could offer that p player a contract he would l likely accept and make a pro profit on them from a futu future transfer. T The selling club mig might only make £20 £20,000 for a player who would earn far mo more than that per w week if they got a professional p deal. Additionally, the th EPPP removed the th ‘90-minute rule’ which prevented academies from signing under-18 players if they th lived beyond 90 minutes’ minutes travel from the club’s training trainin facility.
Previously, larger clubs couldn’t take youth players away from home at a young age. As a result, some Premier League clubs now have sizeable contingents of foreign players on their youth books. Plenty of Manchester United and Manchester City’s brightest prospects fit into that category: Benjamín Garré (Argentinian, City), Tahith Chong (Dutch, United), Alex Fojticek (Slovakian, United) for example.
Selling clubs are left without their most prized youth assets and, had they signed professional terms there, perhaps their most profitable ones.
From being an integral aspect of their previous club’s on and off-pitch future, they become another tiny cog in a huge wheel at an institution where pathways into the first-team are often hampered.
The signing of average players in the interests of squad depth has blocked the route for even the most talented young players.
Consider Chelsea. Few of their promising youngsters have a clear pathway into the first team, so they either play ‘vanilla’ reserve football or go out on
loan. Some Premier League clubs have affiliate clubs abroad. For Chelsea, this club is Vitesse Arnhem of the Eredivisie; Manchester City has NAC Breda (Holland) and Girona (Spain) which serve a similar purpose.
This business model hasn’t won the Blues many admirers. In February 2018, Chelsea’s official website listed 37 players away on loan, some as notable as Michy Batshuayi (now on loan at Crystal Palace), Kurt Zouma (now on loan at Everton), Marco van Ginkel and Charly Musonda Jr (now on loan at Vitesse).
Striker Patrick Bamford, now at Leeds, had six loan spells away from Stamford Bridge before finally moving to Middlesbrough in January 2017, having been on loan at the Riverside in the 2015/16 season.
Such a tumultuous start to a career surely cannot have a positive impact upon a young player’s progression, and so Chelsea may have been guilty of stunting the development of numerous prospects in recent years.
Marko Marin represented four other clubs while on Chelsea’s books (now finally playing regularly at Red Star Belgrade via Olympiakos), while Croatian goalkeeper Matej Delac joined in 2010 from Inter Zapresic and never made a first-team appearance for the Blues.
He spent eight seasons on loan after joining, before settling at AC Horsens in the Danish Superliga. The acquisition of Thibaut Courtois, Willy Caballero C and Eduardo pushed p Delac yet further down d the pecking order.
Incredibly, following the th summer 2017 departure tu of club captain and legend le John Terry, Delac temporarily te became Chelsea’s C longest-serving in player despite never having ha appeared in their starting st XI.
Increasingly, Incr though, young players are getting ge wise to the lack of opportunities a at the top table. Much has been made of the rise of Jadon Sancho since swapping swapp Manchester City for Borussia Dortmund Dortm in 2017.Sancho had racked up 771 minutes in 16 Bundesliga games by late September 2018, while Foden had just jus 73 minutes from seven Premier League Leagu appearances. In mitigation, Foden spent January and February last year st struggling with an ankle injury. Foden’s Fod apparent commitment to the club he has represented since the ag age of eight is impressive, but perh haps misguided. Fellow City gradua ates Brahim Diaz (from Spain) and R Rabbi Matondo have left in search o of first-team games, to Real Madrid and S Schalke respectively.
One is left questioning, then, whether ‘The Stockport Iniesta’ will have to consid consider leaving the Etihad either on loan o or permanently. A midfield consisting of David Silva, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay G Gündogan, Kevin De Bruyne and Fernan Fernandinho will never be easy to break into, es especially given Pep Guardiola’s recent as assurances that Bernardo Silva has forced his way to the top of the team sheet w with his last few performances.
Besides Bes City, Ademola Lookman (Everto (Everton), Reiss Nelson (Arsenal) and Reece Oxford (West Ham) have all spent time, or are currently, away on loan in the Bundesliga, a division much more renowned for giving youth a chance than the Premier League.
In the January transfer window, it was impossible to ignore the media frenzy whipped up by Callum Hudson-Odoi’s prospective transfer to German giants Bayern Munich.
The outlook, then, is mixed. The pathway to Premier League first-teams may be challenging and opportunities limited but, increasingly, players are moving abroad and leaving clubs permanently.
This seems to be having more of an impact on their long-term development, as opposed to going on endless loan spells without settling at one club.
Possession-based under-23 football does not develop the sufficient physicality to succeed at the top level of English football, so it seems the likes of Sancho, Nelson and Matondo are making the right choice in heading to the continent to develop into the players they have been touted as. Perhaps it’s time for Foden to do the same.
@MCallander_42