Post by Macmoish on Jul 31, 2010 7:18:55 GMT
And England U-19 Future...
Telegraph
England Under-19s face barren future in a wasteful system
While the Under-19 team may be good Under-19 players, English clubs will not risk giving them a chance at the highest level.
By Jim White
Published: 8:00AM BST 30 Jul 2010
Fabio Capello is in trouble with the nation’s tabloids. Again. Once he could do no wrong. But since his failure to produce anything approaching a satisfactory performance from his England charges in South Africa, his every move has been scrutinised by the nation’s moral arbiters for opportunities to accuse him of failing in his duty.
This week, he was chastised for not turning up to watch England lose to Spain in the semi-final of the European Under-19 Championship. The fact he was in Spain playing golf was made into the football equivalent of an expenses-fiddling MP, his every moment on the fairway monetised against his enormous salary. Never mind that he was involved in an event to raise money for Seve Ballesteros’s charity, the accusation was that the man clearly did not get it.
Wisely, Capello kept his counsel. Which is just as well, as the honest explanation as to why it would have been a waste of his time watching the under-19s would hardly make palatable reading. But the fact is, he is coach of the England first team. And, thanks to the way we prefer to do football business in this country, the chances of any of those youngsters finding themselves in his orbit are about as high as Ashley Cole becoming BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
I got an invaluable insight into how we develop players here when I met a young man called Eric Dier recently. With a nice irony he is the grandson of Ted Croker, formerly of the Football Association, yet prefers to learn the game out of the country; Dier is the only English footballer currently learning his trade in an overseas academy. And the youth system at Sporting Lisbon has made him into quite a player.
Just 16, at 6ft 2in he is already a towering centre-back, powerful and comfortable on the ball, a Rio Ferdinand in the making. His abilities have been noted. Umbro has signed him up on a four-year deal and several Premier League clubs have tried to woo him. But Dier is not going anywhere until he is at least 20, he says. And when you hear his explanation you can understand why.
Five years ago, when Jose Mourinho was at Chelsea, there were three young Sporting players he targeted for Chelsea’s academy. Two of them went to London aged 16. The third – Adrian Silva – stayed behind. Five years on, the one who stayed is in Sporting’s first team. And the other two are without a club, discarded by Chelsea despite the richness of their potential.
So Dier wants to stay with the club who spotted him when he was living on the Algarve while his mum worked for Euro 2004, because he reckons he has a far better chance of becoming a professional footballer.
It is not the training he would receive that keeps him away from England. As it happens, he says that when Sporting have played Premier League academies, the skill levels of the English youngsters are not bad at all. At places such as Manchester United, Middlesbrough and Manchester City, coaches concentrate on technique. They produce skilled players.
But the problem is not the young players’ ability. It is how they are perceived within their own organisation. Take Liverpool. Despite spending millions a year on their academy, the club have not seen a youngster graduate from there to the first team since Steve Gerrard. With the financial pressure to succeed so enormous, no Liverpool manager has had the luxury to risk blooding a youngster. They have to buy ready-made. And so the players’ pathway has almost disappeared.
The truth is, the players Capello missed out on seeing this week are, if they are lucky, most likely to be plying their trade in the Championship by the time they are old enough to be considered for full international duty. They may be good at 19, but they will not grow into internationals when the system militates against ever giving them a chance.
There was no bigger indictment of the English way than in the World Cup final. Playing for Spain was a man whose game was honed on the playing fields of Carrington. Gerard Pique was at Manchester United for four years as a teenager. But even a manager as renowned for youth development as Alex Ferguson put a glass ceiling on Pique’s growth, not daring to pitch him regularly into the first team. After no more than 12 first-team appearances, he left for a club more likely to give him a real chance. Two years on, he is the proud possessor of Champions League and World Cup-winner’s medals.
To get him back now, Ferguson would have to fork out millions.
Alan Hansen was widely mocked at the time, but the fact is, 15 years after he said it, the view that you will win nothing with kids still pervades English football. No one trusts his own resources, preferring to buy off-the-peg foreigners instead, paying no heed to the consequent damage done to the national team.
If things go well for Eric Dier, when he is 20 and dominating Sporting’s defence, the clubs in the Premier League will be fighting to bring him home. No doubt big money will be involved. But the sad fact is, if they had had him as a youngster, the very same clubs would have squandered his talent.
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/7917311/England-Under-19s-face-barren-future-in-a-wasteful-system.html
Telegraph
England Under-19s face barren future in a wasteful system
While the Under-19 team may be good Under-19 players, English clubs will not risk giving them a chance at the highest level.
By Jim White
Published: 8:00AM BST 30 Jul 2010
Fabio Capello is in trouble with the nation’s tabloids. Again. Once he could do no wrong. But since his failure to produce anything approaching a satisfactory performance from his England charges in South Africa, his every move has been scrutinised by the nation’s moral arbiters for opportunities to accuse him of failing in his duty.
This week, he was chastised for not turning up to watch England lose to Spain in the semi-final of the European Under-19 Championship. The fact he was in Spain playing golf was made into the football equivalent of an expenses-fiddling MP, his every moment on the fairway monetised against his enormous salary. Never mind that he was involved in an event to raise money for Seve Ballesteros’s charity, the accusation was that the man clearly did not get it.
Wisely, Capello kept his counsel. Which is just as well, as the honest explanation as to why it would have been a waste of his time watching the under-19s would hardly make palatable reading. But the fact is, he is coach of the England first team. And, thanks to the way we prefer to do football business in this country, the chances of any of those youngsters finding themselves in his orbit are about as high as Ashley Cole becoming BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
I got an invaluable insight into how we develop players here when I met a young man called Eric Dier recently. With a nice irony he is the grandson of Ted Croker, formerly of the Football Association, yet prefers to learn the game out of the country; Dier is the only English footballer currently learning his trade in an overseas academy. And the youth system at Sporting Lisbon has made him into quite a player.
Just 16, at 6ft 2in he is already a towering centre-back, powerful and comfortable on the ball, a Rio Ferdinand in the making. His abilities have been noted. Umbro has signed him up on a four-year deal and several Premier League clubs have tried to woo him. But Dier is not going anywhere until he is at least 20, he says. And when you hear his explanation you can understand why.
Five years ago, when Jose Mourinho was at Chelsea, there were three young Sporting players he targeted for Chelsea’s academy. Two of them went to London aged 16. The third – Adrian Silva – stayed behind. Five years on, the one who stayed is in Sporting’s first team. And the other two are without a club, discarded by Chelsea despite the richness of their potential.
So Dier wants to stay with the club who spotted him when he was living on the Algarve while his mum worked for Euro 2004, because he reckons he has a far better chance of becoming a professional footballer.
It is not the training he would receive that keeps him away from England. As it happens, he says that when Sporting have played Premier League academies, the skill levels of the English youngsters are not bad at all. At places such as Manchester United, Middlesbrough and Manchester City, coaches concentrate on technique. They produce skilled players.
But the problem is not the young players’ ability. It is how they are perceived within their own organisation. Take Liverpool. Despite spending millions a year on their academy, the club have not seen a youngster graduate from there to the first team since Steve Gerrard. With the financial pressure to succeed so enormous, no Liverpool manager has had the luxury to risk blooding a youngster. They have to buy ready-made. And so the players’ pathway has almost disappeared.
The truth is, the players Capello missed out on seeing this week are, if they are lucky, most likely to be plying their trade in the Championship by the time they are old enough to be considered for full international duty. They may be good at 19, but they will not grow into internationals when the system militates against ever giving them a chance.
There was no bigger indictment of the English way than in the World Cup final. Playing for Spain was a man whose game was honed on the playing fields of Carrington. Gerard Pique was at Manchester United for four years as a teenager. But even a manager as renowned for youth development as Alex Ferguson put a glass ceiling on Pique’s growth, not daring to pitch him regularly into the first team. After no more than 12 first-team appearances, he left for a club more likely to give him a real chance. Two years on, he is the proud possessor of Champions League and World Cup-winner’s medals.
To get him back now, Ferguson would have to fork out millions.
Alan Hansen was widely mocked at the time, but the fact is, 15 years after he said it, the view that you will win nothing with kids still pervades English football. No one trusts his own resources, preferring to buy off-the-peg foreigners instead, paying no heed to the consequent damage done to the national team.
If things go well for Eric Dier, when he is 20 and dominating Sporting’s defence, the clubs in the Premier League will be fighting to bring him home. No doubt big money will be involved. But the sad fact is, if they had had him as a youngster, the very same clubs would have squandered his talent.
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/7917311/England-Under-19s-face-barren-future-in-a-wasteful-system.html