That’s absolutely pathetic from Chelsea.
Some countries are excellent at developing young players (Netherlands, Portugal, France) and others are not. There’s a big debate in England this week about the future of youth academies and Trevor Brooking, now FA Technical Director, says he fears the time might come when England aren’t challenging to win major tournaments but are merely happy to qualify for them. Ahem.
But with the vast riches available to English clubs, primarily from TV revenue, teams like Chelsea can afford to buy any player at any price. Why spend hour after hour scouting young school players, signing them, training and developing them when they might not even eventually make the grade when you have the resources to go out and spend 30m on a proven player?
Clubs like Chelsea have no soul and I don’t understand how their supporters can retain any affinity with what their club has morphed in to. In fairness not all of the biggest English clubs are like Chelsea with Manchester United and Liverpool having a history of bringing through homegrown players.
Arsenal interest me though. One of my best friends supports them and is always lamenting the buying power of the other top 3 English teams. He can be quite withering in his criticism of Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool when they spend big bucks on players and will always mention how Wenger brings players up and turns them into class acts on a much smaller budget.
However, I think in many respects they’re the worst of the 4 clubs. At least when Chelsea buy a player, they pay the going rate and the selling club generally gets properly compensated for the player they’ve developed, e.g. Manchester City getting 20m for Wright-Phillips, 6m going to Southampton for Bridge etc.
Arsenal though are fairly opportunistic in that they can’t really afford to splash out 20m on a player so they swarm around younger players who haven’t even progressed to their club’s first team. Then they’ll sign them by paying a nominal fee or, in some cases, for free because the player isn’t old enough to have signed professional forms already.
So you have instances where a team like Servette or somebody has trained up Phillippe Senderos from the age of 9 or 10 and then Arsenal come in when he’s 16 and swipe him away from them, even before Servette have had a chance to see a player they’ve nurtured for years play in their first team. They’ve done it throughout Wenger’s time there going back to Anelka and continuing right through to Fabregas and they have the system down to a tee. Even now they have a young Mexican striker on their books. He wouldn’t have got a permit under UK labour laws so he’s been on loan in Spain for the last couple of years where he’ll stay until he satisfies a residency requirement over there that will allow him to claim an EU passport and so join up with Arsenal!
Latterly other clubs have seen the potential cost savings to be made from this course of action if you’re fairly satisfied that the 16/17 year old you’ve identified is the real deal. Manchester United haven’t been as successful as Arsenal though with the likes of Pique and Rossi. Benitez signed a raft of youngsters from Hungary, Bulgaria and the likes in the summer while Chelsea’s youth set up is a joke and they don’t really have anyone other than a young Israeli striker, Ben Sahar, who’s out on loan somewhere.
As the rules allow it then it’s fair game but I suppose what I reject is the insinuation that Arsenal are somehow the ‘poor boys fighting the honest fight’. They’ve exactly the same morals as a Chelsea, just not the depth of financial backing.