The quality of the football is poor in that teams are just looking to survive because of the financials, but the actually quality of the players is higher than that of any other league in my view. For me I'd rather have teams with better players in the PL, something I watch week in week out, than have, potentially, a better national team that the majority of people only really start caring about every couple of years. I can see why others may feel differently though.
Yeah I don't get the whole not caring about the national team tbh, and also I'm not very fond of the PL so would much prefer it that way tbh.
The answer has to be a big fat “yes”. The only way to improve the national side long term is to increase the number of kids from academies getting time in the first team. A minimum quota of homegrown players (that’s homegrown in the club, not just from the home countries) has to be instigated. My suggestion of course has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that such a move could only benefit Southampton F.C.
Fair, I've never understood caring that much for the national team so I doubt we are going to agree on this issue
It is hard to work out how this would really go though. In theory it sounds a good idea, but in practice surely the top teams would just hoover up every 10 year old who can kick a ball so that they would be home grown at the club? They already have got rid of the rule where you have to live within 90 mins of the training ground of the club you play for as a youth, so if this came in then surely the top teams would have even more incentive to stockpile talent? The best idea long term (although it is very unpopular) is B teams I think, but I don't think either will ever happen as the PL clubs won't want to lose the massive TV deals that come with the PL by weakening the league in the short term, and the Football League would most likely vote against B teams.
A free market doesn't really work for youth players where the money to buy players doesn't come from the academy producing them. We really need a system that causes the best youth players to go to a team that is most likely to bring them through. And that isn't the team with the most money.
Still not sure about B teams, it sounds too weighted towards the top clubs to me, just like the Elite Player Performance Plan already allows top clubs to hoover up small kids and impose massive compensation fees when the kid wants to move to a lower-League side to get some game time. The whole system, as Fats says, needs reorganising from the bottom up.
How would this work in practice again though? If there is a talented 12/13/14 year old how can there be a system that decides who is most likely to bring them through? If you look at history of clubs bringing players into their first team from academies then Saints would be up there in terms of the top division, but so would someone like Man Utd. If it is just a case of getting the player to be good enough to play in the top flight by, say 21, then teams like Chelsea would also be up there. If this system was in place and Saints got the nod on a batch of the most promising players in the county, they all make the first team by age 20, they then would all want to leave to go to the top clubs and the cycle would have to start again surely?
And they played attractive football and made it out of the group stages. They weren’t losing to the likes or Iceland and drawing to Costa Rica.
I don’t expect any change when we have the old morons at the FA in charge and the media have a free reign to destroy any chance of a coach building a successful team. Southgate has little to credentials, apart from following in the foot steps of being a cracking penalty taker.
His first tournament was pressure free. It was clearly said as Capello left us in the ****. He could have gone all out attack, but Hodgson lacked any flair or imagination. If Southgate takes this pressure free situation, and attempts to play football rather lining up 2 backs of 5 and playing for a 0-0... then it is the correct decision to make this public.
Well both really, as there aren’t many clubs who are guaranteed PL clubs long term, but the richer clubs in both the PL and the Championship are the ones who benefit most from EPPP as it stands. Imagine if you’re a parent of a boy who’s been at a club since they were 6 but isn’t getting game time in the U11’s. Currently if a different club wants to take them on they have to pay up to £6,000 compensation to the parent club, which means that players who might only begin to reach their best development years when they are in their teens might be frozen out by the club they are contracted to but unable to move somewhere else. That can’t be good for anyone: the kid, the parents, the clubs, and English football in general.
In terms of the EPPP rules I would say that, in your example, surely the club and parents would be able to come to some sort of agreement on releasing him if he isn't playing? I would've thought that the compensation rule is there to protect the smaller clubs from a bigger team poaching their players, rather than making it harder for a player who is not wanted/not being used to be able to leave? I have no experience or knowledge within this though so I am just trying to be logical The B teams would basically give players aged 16/17 to 21 a competitive league to play in, it doesn't really impact younger down the age groups, so I agree that that needs to be looked into. But I think B teams are the best way to ensure that players in their mid-late teens aren't missing out on the opportunity to improve as I would say that this is the main time players stagnate due to a lack of playing time.
This article from the Telegraph from a year ago explains the issue quite well: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...eft-scrapheap-thanks-exorbitant-compensation/
Thanks for that, it is a good article and something I had never known about before. The key line for me though is at the very end of the article - "Academy players have the opportunity to apply for their release free from compensation, which is considered by an independent panel". Surely, if this independent panel does it's job correctly, then players who are slipping through the net by not playing would be released. No mention is made by any of the parents in that article or the 16 year old about going through this process and being rejected by the independent panel.
That’s fair enough, as long as the parents know the appeal process exists! Presumably the club the boy wants to move to should be able to advise them? Strange if they aren’t.
Pisses me off that people hold that penalty against him, if there's anyone to blame it's Paul Ince. People always moan that England managers or players don't give a ****, well you can't level that at Gareth so let's give the bloke a chance instead of hanging him eh?
