Pre-season is under way for most clubs and expectations for the 2013-14 season are high. Managers are looking over players to see who will fit into their plans and looking at potential transfer targets to bolster their squads.
For the youth players in the teams this will be their first experience at a real job. Second year apprentices will be hoping they can try and break into their first team, while first years will want the manager to take notice of them and maybe secure a regular reserve team spot.
It’s at this time of year, when the fans start to look at the current youth crop and begin to seek wonder kids. These are players that can bring success to their club, or who can be sold for millions and help the club grow.
But a real question that we should consider is this: do the youngsters in today’s game have hunger to be the best anymore? The Premiership apprentices aren’t turning up to training grounds at 9 in the morning to scrub the first team player’s boots and polish them before they begin training. Instead, you now see youth team players strolling up in the latest car with a designer wash bag tucked underneath their arm.
Greats of the past such as Kevin Keegan, Kenny Daglish and Alan Hansen didn’t turn up to their respective training grounds in flashy cars. They rode the public buses with the other working classes who were about to start their nine to five factory jobs.
When you are sitting on a cramped bus to get into to training early to clean boots caked in mud, before going and training for two hours in the cold and wet with hand-me-down training equipment. In those situations, of course the desire to get better is there.
It’s a lot easier to get comfy in life when you are strolling up to training in a car with all the latest training gear at your call and three pairs of boots to choose from, which have all been cleaned by a boot man. Some of these 17-year-olds are earning as much in a year as some working class families.
The England U-21 side has come under a lot of criticism recently for the whole set up from the F.A. to the manager to the players. But when was the last time Connor Wickham or Thomas Ince scrubbed a players boots? How did they turn up to practice this morning? The desire to be a top footballer and work hard to make it to the top seems to be slipping out of the English game, and therefore affecting the national side.