Some clubs believe that having lots of money and buying players leads to success, this is the school of thought held by the likes of Manchester City, Real Madrid and Chelsea (before Roman Abramovich closed his cheque book). But then if you look closely at the most successful teams around the world, their best players are those groomed from their academies.
Manchester City’s pursuit of the who’s who of players is not an encouraging sign for players coming through their academy. They happen to have one of the best, credited with unearthing the talents of Bradley Wright-Phillips, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Stephen Ireland, Micah Richards and Michael Johnson, all going to play for City’s senior team.
Europe’s best clubs have been built with talent from within and there’s a lot of evidence to support this claim. Manchester United dominated the Premier League since its inception in 1992 with players from their academy like David Beckham, Neville brothers (Gary and Phil), Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Mark Hughes (current Man City coach). Three of the above players are still at the club and they’ve been joined by Wes Brown and John O’shea. There have also been some new additions from the academy — Jonny Evans who deputised perfectly for Rio Ferdinand last season, Danny Welbeck and Darron Gibson. Arsenal’s early success with Wenger was achieved with Tony Adams, Ray Parlour and Martin Keown. Though Arsenal haven’t had much luck lately their academy is still thriving with lots of talent.
There are teams that have invested a lot of money but on most occasions you will find the academy player is the heartbeat of the team. Even after Abramovich’s investment into Chelsea, John Terry has been the driving force behind the team brought through the Chelsea academy since the age of 14. Liverpool have also spent heavily in recent times but their best players have been the local boys — Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard. And though Real Madrid have been obsessed with Galacticos by paying huge sums of money for the likes of Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo and Beckham, some of their best players have been from the youth team — Raul, Iker Casillas and Guti. Barcelona have also been investing heavily of late like the 40 million euros, plus the Samuel Eto’o exchange, they paid Inter Milan for Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The spine of the team is made up of players from the youth set-up — Valdes, Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta and Messi. Their academy could also claim the talents of Cesc Fabregas, Gerard Pique, Giovani Dos Santos, Bojan Krkic and Sergio Busquets.
Elsewhere clubs have found success with stars from their academy — Karim Benzema at Lyon before the multimillion-pound move to Real Madrid, Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini at Milan, Francesco Totti at AS Roma. One of the best academy set-ups in the world is found at Ajax Amsterdam. They claim to have propelled Edwin van der Sar, Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Rafael van der Vaart, Wesley Sneijder, Patrick Kluivert and Nigel de Jong to stardom.
Locally the successful Mamelodi Sundowns team of the late 90s, which was voted South Africa’s team of the decade by winning three league titles in a row, found success with players who grew up at Sundowns like John Tlale, Joas Magolego, Bennett Mnguni, Daniel Mudau, Isaac Shai and Joel Masilela. Ajax Cape Town since their formation in 1999 have had players from their academy go on to play for the senior team.
Lately, big teams have been luring raw talent with lucrative offers and many have started grooming with the intent to sell later, one such team is Sporting CP, which has given us the talents of Ricardo Quaresma, Luis Nani and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Players will continue to be traded for a lot of money as many clubs try to enjoy success by bringing in top talent for lots of money. When you consider all the stars mentioned above and the success they brought to their respective teams, it shows that the greatest of players do not carry a hefty price tag.
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