[Serious] GL's Roundtable - The Football Academies Edition

The idea is to debate whether or not football academies are overrated. I chose the word "overrated" very carefully because I do acknowledge the fact that they play a very important role in developing and honing the players' tactical skills (positioning, game reading,...),. However, when it comes to the players' natural skills, I think the academy has little, or perhaps nothing, to do with it, but for some reason they take credit for it.

If football academies were the manufacturers of true head breakers, how come they are struggling to produce proper replacements to the ones they lost? How come La Masia is as dry as a bone and haven't even come close to producing guys as talented as Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol and all those youth products who made Guardiola's legendary team? How about United's class of 92? I'm still waiting for them to unveil another Scholes or Giggs or Neville. Why didn't they buy another Portuguese player and turned him into a beast like Ronaldo? How come they failed to develop Nani or Bebe? What about Real Madrid's La Fabrica? Where's Raul 2.0 or Casillas? And the same goes for all the rest of them by the way (Ajax, Benfica and all those academies who are widely perceived to be the makers of future Ballon d'Or winners).

Please understand that I'm not trying to belittle their role in developing players and turning them into professionals through intense, grueling trainings and strict diet regimes. I'm just saying that they can only help so much and they are not the ones who create Ronaldo's and Messi's. Only the players can develop themselves to reach that level, provided of course they have already enough talent for it.

This is my take and I would love to hear yours. Take it away guys

I think (almost) every professional players are products of Academy (of some sort). Don't think there's more than a handful of players who like Maradona became a professional players straight from playing in the shanties.

Academies take in players/kid at very early age (as young as six). Just as (even) the supremely talented kids go through schools on their way to becoming Engineers, Biologists, Economists; the academies provide the framework to utilize (and optimize) their talents.

Don't you think Salah, Hazard or Kane went through some sort of Academy on their way to becoming what they are today?

Maybe I didn't express myself very well, I apologize. This is not academy players vs street players. What I meant by my OP was, how come football academies aren't very consistent with their youth products? They claim to be the driving force behind the development of some of the best players in the world, and yet they don't produce those very often. If they truly are the architects of those gems, why don't we see similar players popping out of those academies every now and then? I'm not even talking about Ballon d'Or winners at this points, but just WC talents.

Let me further illustrate my point with the three players you mentioned: should Tottenham take credit for Kane's rise to the top as a WC CF or is it mostly Kane? If they truly were the ones behind his development, how come they are not producing similarly talented CFs?

Same goes for Salah and Hazard; should Liverpool or Roma or Chelsea or Lille take credit for them or should we just say that if Salah and Hazard didn't have the talent, they wouldn't have risen to such a high level regardless of the academy's effort?

I can only talk about my own experience in futbol academies and how a few things have changed since the early 2000's. When I look back at the players I have played with, and against, I see a clear difference in the mental aspect and the hopes, dreams and goals. The players i knew; we just wanted to play for the sake of playing the game. We did not leave our club at 14 because we didnt have enough playing time or the progress wasnt deemed fast enough.

I am still involved in futbol as a tactical analyst for a company and still travel to many clubs over the course over a year. You wouldnt believe how many youth players switch clubs between 10 - 15. I've seen players go from Chelsea to Bayern to Barcelona and ending up at Villareal because the chances of breaking in the C or B team is bigger. The dreams and hopes are very different. Whereas we wanted to play for the sake of playing; these past decade has changed so much - it has also changes the dreams. I do feel a lot of these new kids want the quick fame and wealth and it does hinder their career and progress.

Once in a while a great player gets in the A team and will make it as a starting eleven. I think about 8 players of the Bilbao team are from their youth team which is absolutely crazy and very impressive, giving their budget. I do feel this is the way to go: teams like Bilbao, Villareal, Sociedad etc attract players who want to play rather then being famous.

Dont really know the EPL equivalent but I can tell you Chelsea youth academy is ruining more players then making them a succes. These kind of teams, and there are lots of them, are treating players as a form of income and nothing else. They are modern slaves and it hinders the progress. These kids think its a great opportunity to leave a great youth system like Bilbao or Feyenoord or whatever and go to Chelsea, only to end up being on the C list and getting loaned out to Thessaloniki playing fiddle to a washed up B star.

So a few things in short:
- dreams and goals have changed. Fast money, fast fame. Taking away the essence of older generations: playing the game. (dont get me wrong; i do know there are lots of players in older generations who only did it for the money, but i do have the feeling its less).
- clubs actings as companys and thus hindering the progress

So, this new Messi, Iniesta, Scholes and Gerard are out there somewhere; they just took the wrong paths, have the wrong ambitions and are not playing where they should be playing. If i can give you one advice: aim for Everton, Bilbao, Wolfsburg etc as your objective and if you are good enough you will stand out. If you only want to play for Madrid because you want to be the new Ronaldo with all the girls, the money and the attention you will likely end up on the bench at Girona or playing in the greek league.

The Demon of Carthage wrote:What I meant by my OP was, how come football academies aren't very consistent with their youth products?

They are. You are thinking about Kane, Messi, Salah, etc. This is the top 0.001% of footballers. Since many are well trained, natural talent and growing environment (family, society, etc.) differentiates.

If you think about it, how do have stereotypes in football? because academies are consistent. Italy produced 10s and CBs, Brazil produced dribblers and fullbacks, Argentina produced forwards, Spain produced midfielders, etc. This is because the coaching in these countries were good in certain areas, and were able to produce these.

Same if you go for club level. Saying that la Masia is dry isn't really true. Messi comes once in 100. Meanwhile they produced Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Valdes, Puyol, etc. But these elite footballers aren't the only successes. Players like Rafinha, Sergi Roberto, Denis Suarez, Bojan, Deulofeu, etc. still made it. Then you have Icardi, Keita and others that left early.

Coaching is huge. Why does the Juve academy suck and why does Inter's or Atalanta's succeed? its not random. Its because they are developed differently.

Now, academies change with time because you have changing staff and changing goals. So that X academy was great in the 70s doesn't mean its great now.

Chances are someone trained through all levels of Madrid's academy is gonna be massively better at football than someone from the academy of Caracas FC. The rest is the spark given by nature.

I can only speak for my local academy. They offer first and foremost competition, the turnover year to year is incredible as they are constantly scouting and bringing in new talent. So it’s internal competition as well as the ligas they play in.  The coaching is first rate and they practice several hours daily. Their season is same as big teams and thus they are coached / taught 10 months a year, a minimum of 2 hours daily.

So I would say definitely they help big time in the development of the talent. However you’re looking for next Ronaldo or Messi and with that it’s more a question of scouting than development. They can help develop or refine talent, but most of the talent is not taught!

As to the scouting, they are constantly looking for talent and with big teams, that search is world wide, although rules have now changed making it a lot harder to get (and refine) youngsters under 18.

rincon wrote:Same if you go for club level. Saying that la Masia is dry isn't really true. Messi comes once in 100. Meanwhile they produced Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Valdes, Puyol, etc. But these elite footballers aren't the only successes. Players like Rafinha, Sergi Roberto, Denis Suarez, Bojan, Deulofeu, etc. still made it. Then you have Icardi, Keita and others that left early.

But they weren't able to produce similar talent to Xavi, Iniesta and Puyol, and that's precisely my point. The fact that they are now forced to look for talent elsewhere instead of dipping into their reserves leads me to believe that their golden generation under Guardiola was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement that had little do with La Masia's development skills and more to do with them being lucky enough to have a group of naturally gifted footballers play for them.

I'm not talking about Bojan, Rafinha, Deulofeu and the likes, I'm talking about WC players who defined an era. La Masia took credit for them but it failed to replace them with equally talented footballers. That should raise some questions on whether or not academies are the ones behind the development of WC players or are they just good enough to help you become decent and the rest depends on how naturally gifted you are. If the second proposition is true then football academies shouldn't take credit when one of their youth product becomes a world beater.

I think your initial argument here is flawed Demon.
I mean I get what you're trying to get at (where is the hype of all these young talented kids per academy turning out great), but what you're not tying in to your argument is that every single WC player out there now today came from an academy.

How come football academies aren't consistent with their youth products? Well the game is ever expanding now these days with scouting seeing big changes come into play such as stats analysts in order to recruit new players, plus they're looking all over the world now as well. This increases the scope (in terms of country, skillset, academy) of the players that can come out on top to WC-level. And decreases the chances that one club will produce a single era of WC players that purely comes from one country and one academy like how you seem to want it with Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, and Giggs, Scholes, Neville.

At some point a footballer comes out from somewhere. Every footballer comes out of an academy of some sort. The argument is too broad. U can narrow it to academy of a certain country or certain club, but academies in general have a role and theyve been playing that role. Its very rare that some player just gets picked from the street and plays

Now if u are arguing about who makes who a star, thats still too broad. The job of the academy isnt to make u a star. They help build you professionally but thats where it stops. Every ladder you climb has a different role.

Academies are necessary they have been churning out footballers for years , good bad and ugly. Almost every footballer is a youth product of some club even if its the local division 100 club next to the fish market

The Demon of Carthage wrote:

rincon wrote:Same if you go for club level. Saying that la Masia is dry isn't really true. Messi comes once in 100. Meanwhile they produced Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Valdes, Puyol, etc. But these elite footballers aren't the only successes. Players like Rafinha, Sergi Roberto, Denis Suarez, Bojan, Deulofeu, etc. still made it. Then you have Icardi, Keita and others that left early.

But they weren't able to produce similar talent to Xavi, Iniesta and Puyol, and that's precisely my point. The fact that they are now forced to look for talent elsewhere instead of dipping into their reserves leads me to believe that their golden generation under Guardiola was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement that had little do with La Masia's development skills and more to do with them being lucky enough to have a group of naturally gifted footballers play for them.

I'm not talking about Bojan, Rafinha, Deulofeu and the likes, I'm talking about WC players who defined an era. La Masia took credit for them but it failed to replace them with equally talented footballers. That should raise some questions on whether or not academies are the ones behind the development of WC players or are they just good enough to help you become decent and the rest depends on how naturally gifted you are. If the second proposition is true then football academies shouldn't take credit when one of their youth product becomes a world beater.

Think about the argument. How can one academy produce era-defining footballers every few years? It's not always possible. Footballers don't play in a vacuum. Barca is out there doing their best to train these kids and produce the best player, but they are not alone. 1000 other academies are competing to do the same. If one academy is training the era-defining player, then the rest are not.

Academies should definitely take credit for their coaching. That doesn't mean that talent doesn't exist. Some players are born with more talent and that's it. Now, you can have the quickest feet and the softest touch but if you are not coached properly you won't even be good enough to play professional football. This is what they develop, they try to make the best possible player possible out of the raw talent they get.

So, was la masia lucky to get Messi, Xavi and co. in their youth ranks? yes. Were they great at training and developing them? yes. No doubt that if a poor academy had had some of these players then they wouldn't have become as great as they did. It's no coincidence that they produced so many in the last 4 decades. It means that they were doing the right things.

Athletic and the Basque are a great example. Small place, small population, tight restrictions, yet there they are at the top of football with their own players consistently produced by their academies.

The fact that academies cannot consistently produce world class players proves that the individual qualities that world class players have aren't coachable. You cannot teach the genius that Messi, Ronaldo, Xavi, Iniesta, etc. possess.

However, what you can do is provide them with the best foundation to succeed. Academies are about teaching the game to players and embedding in a style of football that the first team uses. You'll know if a player has the technique or not when they're as young as 8, but the mental and physical conditioning can only come from good coaching.

But even then, how successful a player is comes down to his own qualities. Balotelli emerged at 16 and looked a star in the making, but he never reached that level. Why? Because he lacked maturity and professionalism. Maybe that's part Inter's fault for not educating him well enough, but the player also has to take responsibility for their own career. There are WC players who are just natural born geniuses, but there are plenty who are humble, hard working, listen to their coaches and work endlessly on their game to extract the most from their talent.

Players are human and all humans are different. Those qualities I mentioned could come naturally to someone, or maybe they develop because a player has had a difficult upbringing and he needed them to get by. There's a reason many of the game's great tend to come from humble backgrounds. Natural variance also means that you're always going to get a limited number of great players.

Never underestimate the role luck has in this as well. If Messi was a player in a different era he might never had access to the treatment he needed to catch-up physically with his peers and we would have never seen him become professional. Clubs have scouts all over the place but it's impossible to catch every great kid. Some will inevitably slip under the radar and join a different academy or just never play football at all. There are so many links in this chain - so many steps that have to be taken to get  a boy into an academy, train him, raise him, etc. - that chances of something going wrong along the way are quite high.

An example of this: Harry Kane used to be in Arsenal's academy. He was in their set-up up until the age of around 13, but Arsenal's academy director at the time Liam Brady released him because Kane carried too much weight. Any other director might have not seen that as issue, kept Kane, and watched him become a world class striker for Arsenal. As it was, Spurs took a chance on him and are reaping those benefits. Kane was lucky enough to have another club take a chance on him after being released when many other players would not have been. But once he got that chance, he did all he could with it to become the player he is now. (And then there's the debate of who takes credit for Kane's development: Arsenal for laying the early foundations of Spurs for applying the finishing touches, but that's for another thread maybe).