Is that the "He plays on the left he plays on the right, Dusan Tadic makes Lord Twatbeard look ****e" song?
Like the idea of adding youngsters from abroad to the Academy. We're already something of a 'finishing school', having brought in a number of kids who started in academies elsewhere who moved at 14-16 to Saints to hone their craft, so expanding the net certainly doesn't hurt.
There was an article the other day that had something like that. In order for us to beat FFP, we could set up development centres and soccer schools in every major city in the world, then satellite centres in several regions, and we cherry-pick the best kids who go there. We'd teach them "The Southampton Way" of playing football, and if they're good enough, they eventually join the academy in Southampton. They come through, and we develop them. If we later sell them off.. that's more kudos for our schools.
Don't necessarily even need to go to that (exceedingly expensive) extreme. Now that catchment areas are a thing of the past, we're already seeing kids from across the UK choosing to go to Saints because of our player development reputation (or, ascribing more mercenary intent, because they can reach the first team earlier and get a big transfer, oh noes). Increase our profile in some of the lesser European markets and we could be seen as a pathway for talented kids who might otherwise get plucked up by the bigger European clubs at 16.
TBF at least liverpool have waited for our players to get called up to senior national squads. Arsene picked off another of our kids.
Well, we can certainly spot the talent, as long as we don't try to squeeze him in too early, he could explode on the scene.
Might not be that expensive, if you think about it. I'm sure there's soccer schools across Europe. Maybe sponsorship?
https://twitter.com/GalgoSchelotto/following Ezequiel Schelotto has just started following the Official Southampton account...
