Five years ago it opened St George Park with the goal of improving player development. Today England has the best young players in the world ( not really an opinion : world champions at U20 and U17, European champions at U19, 4th best and U21 where they would probably have done better if their best striker wasn't leading the line for the seniors ). Fair to say that this is at least one of the causes of the effect ?
The problem is they then get farmed out on loan and their young careers are disrupted massively by that. They need stability and to be at a club that nurtures them and values them as people and not cattle.
From an economics background the timing isn’t right. More likely this Is to do with the hoovering up models introduced by rich clubs, kids are getting access to serious facilities and coaching. Look at the youth cup records at Chelsea and City then take a look at where these kids are contracted. In four years if the seniors are doing well then you might have something. But these kids aren’t even close to turning out regularly for their club sides and so the talent will reach 20, 21, 22 and just stagnate.
This is a mad thought, but what about having a central contract for England players in the same way that you do for cricket? I'd rather see a group of young lads who are passionate about playing for their country and act and train as a team. They might even do better than the current model of prima-donnas drafted in because they're the only Englishman at a 'big' club - after all, they can hardly do worse!
All true but it doesn't answer the question : should we give the FA credit for having got them this far ?
When Spain had it's golden generation, did they win the youth championships before going into the senior squad? It's a good sign for sure, but I think we all know that football and player development is slightly ****ed in this country and we fear the worst. If the players are good enough though I think they will get game time. Like has been said, Guardiola has a good track record of giving youth players a chance. I mean, if he fails to win the Premier League just once he'll probably be sacked but hopefully these top managers will do the right thing and develop them.
Not sure how much time they spend at St Georges Park compared to home club so difficult to comment. However think Lord Jonjomort might have hit the nail on the head with his comment about the spending of the bigger clubs on youth development. The excellent recent results of the England youth teams may be a consequence of the fact that these players are shared between these clubs and have access to the best facilities and coaches in the world together with the chance to develop good understandings with their team mates. Anyone who has seen the facilities at Man City will realise the effort the club makes to develop young talent. We tend to knock the fact that these clubs are hoovering up all the talent but this may be one positive benefit of that. Whether it benefits the game as a whole in England is another matter. My argument would be that it actually does as there must be a trickle-down of the poorer players to the lesser clubs. It is unfair to knock these clubs for holding on to all these players if all the clubs aren't going to put the same effort into youth development. Better that they are developed somewhere than not at all. Minor tweaks in the rules on farm-outs and overall playing squad sizes (from say age 23 onwards) could mean that these clubs are doing the league AND the England teams a favour. Of course they will get to keep the better players but then they are paying for that privilege.
Is having nice flashy gyms and training pitches, sports scientists, and top coaches better than actually playing in competitive games though? That would be the counter argument. Look, whether they are developing players better than other clubs, it is fundamentally a bit of a farce and quite a lot unfair that the likes of Chelsea are loaning out 33 players this season. I really don't think scrapping loans altogether would be wise, but it needs to be curbed. How many young players have they got at the club on top of the 33 who are on loan? If they are local kids then there should be no restrictions on numbers of players and numbers of loans, but if they are being brought in from around the country or world then there should be limits of some kind.
I don't have any real issue with clubs loaning out players. A loaned out player is getting game time at more or less the highest level he is capable of, whether that be in a lower half Prem team or a Championship team. If loans were abolished, these players would be playing at much the same level of club but would just be contracted to that club. It is players spending their formative years in the reserves that strikes me as the issue.
The problem with relying on City's youth policy is that there's no competitive element, no real experience being gained. In U-19 or U-17 competition you're up against kids with the same, if not less, experience as they're learning on the training pitches of a lot of different clubs, none of whom are even remotely close to the level of City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Man U, Southampton and more besides! They get all this science, training, nutrition, but when it comes to a senior side there's that thing in your head about managing the game better. Abroad, these kids are spread across a number of clubs and at 17, 18 years of age will be debuting at places like Hamburg, Malaga, Nice. In England, our lesser clubs - including us, where's Lewis Gibson now?! - aren't getting access to the talent anymore, so it's getting harder to put top talent into the line up. There's also the economic impacts of relegation and the fear that then comes with playing defensive, organised football and it means the first teams in the PL are a million miles away from the cushy, free-flowing fluff played at Man City reserves. Look at our lad El-Mhanni. There's quite possibly no player in the country with his tricks. But how's his discipline, his awareness, positioning, mental conditioning, etc.? There's so much more to being a pro footballer. Atsu is an incredible talent, but he lacks quite a lot of the mental game which is why he's a mid-table winger and not at the level of Hazard - yet Atsu is better than every u-19 and u-17 player by a distance. The issue is not just that they're pampered, but the arrogance that comes with it - how can these players deal with challenges when everything's on a silver platter for the early years? Too much too you. What summed this up for me was that lad scoring the third goal. No celebration, just standing there like he's fcking God's gift to the World of football, like "yeah, I did that, I'm boss" or whatever the yoof of today say.
