The twenty first century demand for instant success is endemic in our society, and football doesn’t escape that. People such as Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour’s acquisition of English clubs has served to increase this attitude at an exponential rate, but the fact is that it existed prior to these influences.
Huge club debt, soaring transferprices and the decrease in connection between fans and their clubs are all clear effects of this worldwide movement; but one of the most disappointing areas that it affects is youth development within clubs.
It’s disappointing not just for our international scene but also for fans who want to see players pulling on the shirt for their club who have an actual affiliation with it. Some of the greatest players this league has ever seen have come through club youth systems.
You only have to look at the products of West Ham’s academy, or Arsenal’s or the famed nineties Man Utd team to see what can be achieved through blooding your own players. Look at Barcelona’s current team, how many of the starting eleven were produced at no cost other than that of the coaching? But it seems that very few are no prepared to invest sufficient capital and energy into such ventures.
Attitude
One thing we can definitely put it down to is the attitude of wanting instant success. The famously over-used Alan Hansen phrase “you can’t win anything with kids” is thrown about as some kind of excuse for not bothering to attempt to really blood youngsters. The fact is however that the year Hansen said that about Man Utd they won the league and FA Cup double. So it proves how much weight that statement should really have.
I think one problem is not just the owners wanting instant success, but also the fans putting pressure on the owners to implement it. It would be too simplistic to blame it on foreign owners or managers coming in and not caring about the youth prospects at the club, although this does happen; all fans need to realise the part they play in this issue.
Money
One of the main reasons has to be money, though. If you look at the clubs in our country that are currently known for making an effort with their youth prospects they are normally the ones who lack or want money. Firstly there’s Arsenal who, although relatively rich, have become quite obsessed during the Wenger tenure with not spending money.
They want to stick to their self-sustaining business model with only the occasional outside help. Then you have clubs like Everton who have produced Rooney, Rodwell and others in recent years but again don’t have a penny to their name. West Ham have produced players that make up a large number of recent and current England internationals. But for the clubs that have money there is less of an incentive.
Not only do the big clubs seem less concerned about taking on more debt, but the gap between large and small clubs is ever increasing in terms of monetary clout. The result is that it just seems easier for the big clubs to treat other people’s academies as their own and sign the players they want for reasonable fees when gems arise. The teams that do produce these players are provided with incentives (money) to do so but soon with the introduction of the EPPP that may disappear too.
Then what will we be left with? The smaller clubs producing players for their teams through necessity as they might not be able to afford to buy players and then, because of the EPPP, they will now receive barely any money as a result for producing these players so the financial gap between big and small clubs will increase and there will be even less reason for the big clubs to produce their own players. Even as a supporter of a ‘big club’ I find the situation farcical.