Ted Hughes wrote:ant london wrote:Ted Hughes wrote:The fact that we feel we need to import that many young players from abroad means something in this country is desperately, hopelessly wrong.
I agree actually. Despite the fact that it probably means that we will raise the bar in terms of the quality available soon to the first team it surely is a fairly damning indictment of the fact that the academy has not actually been doing that great a job.
Sure, in UK terms it has been outperforming most of the other UK club's efforts but vs overseas comparisons such as Barcelona, Sporting Lisbon or Ajax it has to be viewed as desperately average in terms of the output to date
Most of the real quality English kids have passed us by but I don't think it's just our academy, I think there's a lack of raw talent for them to pick from. Some, like West Ham, have been far better than us at spotting the talent that does exist but in a football loving country like this, there should be 10 times as many quality players to pick from. In the 60's & 70's there were. If these facilities had existed then, teams wouldn't have needed transfers, they'd've all had 11 home grown players.
Kids aren't born without talent, that's for sure, so something is cocking them up before they reach us.
What is being suggested here is that youth development techniques are well inadequate in the UK.
is it that if you show some technical skill or flair you get clogged from an early age? ( in other words our system is geared to bringing everyone down to the cloggers level )
Is there still not enough emphasis on individual skills in the development stages of kids?
Anyone got any experience of youth development in other countries, if so how does it differ from the UK?