It’s a dark dark day in any young adult’s life when they are finally forced to accept they aren’t going to make it as a professional footballer. The pain is made all the more acute by it being a drawn out process – usually taking place between the years of 15 and 18 – of waiting, largely in vain, for the sparks of skill to appear and propel you into superstardom. The proverbial nail in the coffin is watching your team fill up with players who are just a few years older than you; only a year your senior; share your year of birth; were born a few months after you; could’ve been three years below you at school…
As hard as it is, it’s undeniably easy on the eye watching these prodigious talents bloom, and our inner mystics, sensing they have the beating of any conservative rationality our brains possess (ha!), run amok waxing lyrical about just how good these kids are going to be and exactly which qualities they display in abundance unseen since Zidane, Cruff, Best, Eusébio et al.
With all the oohing and aahing that soundtrack Arsenal’s starting Carling Cup 11, it’s hard to see these starlets as anything other than flamboyant zoo animals; yet the creative freedom exhibited on the pitch can sometimes be in tragic contrast with the shackles off it, the bonds and demands from contracts, agents and the press. This is something I feel needs addressed for the good of the players, the national team and the game of football in general.
Before continuing it is worth pointing out now that as I write this I am currently unemployed and in a substantial amount of debt to various persons, so I’m not painting the ‘I-get-paid-£70,000-a-week-why-do-people-get-so-pissed-when-I-act-like-a-twat-and-then-moan-about-the-exposure’ picture; I’d happily accept one-hundredth of that amount to play football for a living (I’d even wear sensible black boots and do my damndest not to shag any whores into the bargain). This is not about the money, but the manner in which it is offered.
When it comes to dealing with hot young prospects, the clubs just as often end up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop, but in discussions about the darker side of being the next Maradona, first port of call should always be the player. It’s now not uncommon for Premier League appearances to be handed to 15/16 year-olds, and a boy can be a first-team regular by the time of his 18th birthday. Good times, this bodes well for the future.
When I was that age all I needed for a good time was an irresponsible adult to overlook certain moral obligations and turn a blind eye while I made my own mistakes, and even from my position of almost complete ignorance, it seems like it’s a similar case for these multimillionaire teenagers. Only difference is, the negligent adults in my case were the ‘cool’ uncles or sketchy homeless guys who bought us cider and the ethically spurious shopkeepers who accepted horrendous fake IDs.
For young footballers it’s the agents who limpet on to their talent and offer them salaries their Standard Grade Maths can’t even begin to process (and that’s before we’ve started talking about bonuses, clauses, sponsorship or advertisements). It’s the big teams who sign them and root their potential to the reserve team bench; or the hometown clubs who put themselves in a position where they have to cash-in on their assets because of boardroom incompetence.
These are kids who weren’t alive when Nirvana split-up; you can’t offer them obscene amounts of money and then expect them to concentrate on football, and get pissy when they don’t fulfil their potential. There is a responsibility of agents and clubs to take into account the human being, not just the ability.
Of course, this wishy-washy, ‘love thy neighbour’ crap doesn’t actually work in real life. Football is a multi-trillion pound industry and it certainly didn’t get there without leaving a few stragglers by the wayside. Those in positions of power will say that it’s always been a performance-based industry – a buyer’s market – and charity will dilute the quality of the game. Emerging young talents are going to have to be exposed to the ‘real world’ sooner or later and the fact is, if they’re good enough to get paid as much as 20/30 year-olds, they should be expected to put up with the some pressures and constraints.
Fair enough, can’t really argue with that. Footballers’ wages are offered in direct relation to their perceived value, and if Hess…I mean Messi, is the best player in the world at 21, pay him accordingly. Attention however, has to be paid lower down the spectrum. Not everyone’s situation if different, and the Argentine maestro is quite clearly an exception in terms of talent. Not everyone is going to be as talented, lucky or, personality-wise, as down to earth. Some kind of structure therefore has to be set up.
Messi’s legend is well-known: brought over to Spain after being rejected by homeland-giants River Plate as being too weak, Barcelona paid for him to have hormone injections and next thing you know he’s up like a salmon, merkin’ Rio to head past Van der Sar in the Stadio Olympico. At five years old however, he started played for a team his dad managed, and when Rijkaard & co. came calling, his family relocated to Catalonia with him. He has thus always had people around him to keep his featherweight frame grounded and this is something that his humble demeanour and media-shyness is directly credited to.
Not every player is so lucky (or so naturally shy) however, and so at some point a ‘guardian’ has to be appointed to advise the player and (in theory) look out for their best interests. If not, less talented but more astute predators will begin to prey. This is where the problems start.
If you’ve never heard of him before, all you need to know about Kia Joorabchian is that he has two passports, each with a different name and different date of birth on it. He’s not actually a qualified football agent – describing himself (somewhat reluctantly you would feel) as an ‘advisor’ to players – and yet has been the lynchpin in some of the most lucrative and high-profile transfers in world football. He basically legally collects footballers.
Not in the sense of having a meticulously above-board Subbuteo hobby; but rather he goes around, like a cross between the Childcatcher and Rasputin, offering talented but impoverished footballers a seemingly princely, but in actual fact nominal, fee in return for their freedom of contract. He then ‘loans’ them out to clubs (and demands that 100% of their substantial wage demands to be paid) where they then make their name, and when the big boys come in with £30 mil, he pockets the transfer fee.
Clearly it’s not in anyone apart from these so-called agents’ best interest for players to be traded like shares in the City of London, and for me, this problem is best solved at its source. Make it illegal for an individual to be bought by another individual, and introducing a EU-wide ban on ‘advisors’ like Joorabchian. The big-money moves are to European football, so even if this law can’t be passed or realistically implicated on other continents, make it impossible to find anyone offering the money these people are looking for. If Platini only does one useful thing during his time in office, I really hope this is it (I also wonder if he’s even thought of having a camera on the goal line?).
The aforementioned ‘advisor’-types will undoubtedly point out that if this happens, the players will remain undiscovered or undeveloped because they will be forced to stay at their hometown clubs and never get an opportunity on the bigger stages. Big problem, with a simply answer: make their hometown clubs better.
Not by putting ads on the Middle Eastern Gumtree trying to find investors for Scunthorpe United and Elephant & Castle’s pub team, but spending the money constantly promised for youth development, on youth development, and getting the (minimal) existing infrastructure to communicate internally. Nationalise youth development in Home Nations and structure them more like France – who won the World Cup in 1998 & the Euros in 2000 – and Spain – who won the Euros in 2006 & and the World Cup in 2010. True, the former may have had a spot of bother in South Africa, but that was probably down to the fact they had a coach who couldn’t decide if he was Copernicus or Casanova; either way he was definitely more Chaplin than Clough.
Before that however, Les Bleus produced some of the finest world footballers of the last 30 years. This is partly because they can still poach players from their former colonies, but also because of the national football association’s infrastructure. And I don’t even need to talk about Spain’s youth set-up.
In France, youth players train at one of seven, well-funded, national academies during the week before returning to their local clubs at the weekend; in Spain it’s alternate weekends between representing their school team and their academy side. The emphasis is on plucking talent and training them at a higher level, but also letting the player return to their local teams so that the lower leagues’ standard is continually improving by having quality footballers playing in it. The academy communicates with the local teams to make sure their pupils are putting in a shift at the weekend, and also advises the managers which areas of the star player’s game could be improved, and also how the rest of the team could learn from/develop by playing with him.
Britain’s smaller than both France and Spain so it would be fairly easy to ensure all parts of the country had access to the academies, transport would be paid for, and if 14/15/16 year olds spent more time playing football and in a learning environment, not only will they become better players, they might not grow up to be the kind of guy who cheats on his missus with genks.
At the moment, unless a hot prospect is born near a nationally recognised academy (West Ham for example), someone ends up getting hurt as one of two scenarios play out. Either they sign for their local academy, who then train them but lose them to a bigger club on a free before they turn 17 and are eligible to sign a professional contract; or they sign a professional contract at their local team or another smaller side, show potential after a few first team appearances, and are snapped up for a nominal fee by a Premiership outfit, before rotting on the bench or being loaned out to a lower league than they initially started in.
The first instance seems grossly unfair: a team, with limited income, has invested time and money developing a talent, and received zero compensation for them. Understandably, the likes of Man U and Arsenal want to bring hot prospects in at an age where they can still significantly influence their development. The player is relatively unproven so they aren’t going to pay millions (unless it’s a Rooney or a Ramsey we’re talking about) and the youngster isn’t exactly going to turn down a chance to play for these teams. But because they’re under 17, their initial mentors, the smaller club, get paid zilch.
The second case harms both the youngster most because they don’t play anything like as much first-team football, and their talent therefore, unless exceptional, is squandered. Obviously there is an element of ‘if they’re good enough they’ll play’, but the focus can’t just be on producing exceptional footballers; England and Scotland need good 21 year olds just as much as they need exceptional ones. There’s not point in only bringing 11 world-class superstars through the ranks because, who are they going to play with/against? What’s going to happen when they get injured?
Also, not everyone develops into an outstanding player until later in life. Ian Wright didn’t sign professionally until he was nearly 22 (hope for yours truly, who obviously only hasn’t been called up by Fabio yet because the England scouts haven’t been down the Meadows recently), and without a decent standard of league, the exceptional footballers aren’t going to fulfil their full potential, because they’ll never come up against anyone who can really stretch their ability.
If a quality national academy could set-up, then players would be developed regionally with tabs being kept on exactly which youngsters came from which club. This would allow an element of parity to be maintained when professional contracts were offered because the original parent club would be given priority. The academy could also oversee contract negotiations, ensuring the inclusion of clauses stating a minimum number of appearances, to stop big clubs stockpiling and wasting youth prospects, whilst also ensuring the Rasputin-Childcatchers out there are completely excluded from British football.
The future of football is in having a world-class youth system – Spain and Germany taught us as much in South Africa this summer – and not just looking for the diamonds, but filtering out the slightly less precious (but no less useful) elements as well, in order to allow late developers to bloom and keep the young hot-shots constantly on their toes.
We need to be developing a Golden Generation, not a Golden 11 – look where having two world-class attacking midfielders has left England; we can’t bloody play both of them. Introducing a properly run, properly funded, nationwide footballing body, primarily devoted to ensuring what’s best for the youngsters (and by extension their national side), but who also seek to improve the standard of lower leagues, is essential if England (or Scotland) are ever going to make waves in internationally football again. That, and getting a few scouts up to Edinburgh ASAP, because I turn 22 soon and my ambitions will then turn to management.
As hard as it is, it’s undeniably easy on the eye watching these prodigious talents bloom, and our inner mystics, sensing they have the beating of any conservative rationality our brains possess (ha!), run amok waxing lyrical about just how good these kids are going to be and exactly which qualities they display in abundance unseen since Zidane, Cruff, Best, Eusébio et al.
With all the oohing and aahing that soundtrack Arsenal’s starting Carling Cup 11, it’s hard to see these starlets as anything other than flamboyant zoo animals; yet the creative freedom exhibited on the pitch can sometimes be in tragic contrast with the shackles off it, the bonds and demands from contracts, agents and the press. This is something I feel needs addressed for the good of the players, the national team and the game of football in general.
Before continuing it is worth pointing out now that as I write this I am currently unemployed and in a substantial amount of debt to various persons, so I’m not painting the ‘I-get-paid-£70,000-a-week-why-do-people-get-so-pissed-when-I-act-like-a-twat-and-then-moan-about-the-exposure’ picture; I’d happily accept one-hundredth of that amount to play football for a living (I’d even wear sensible black boots and do my damndest not to shag any whores into the bargain). This is not about the money, but the manner in which it is offered.
When it comes to dealing with hot young prospects, the clubs just as often end up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop, but in discussions about the darker side of being the next Maradona, first port of call should always be the player. It’s now not uncommon for Premier League appearances to be handed to 15/16 year-olds, and a boy can be a first-team regular by the time of his 18th birthday. Good times, this bodes well for the future.
When I was that age all I needed for a good time was an irresponsible adult to overlook certain moral obligations and turn a blind eye while I made my own mistakes, and even from my position of almost complete ignorance, it seems like it’s a similar case for these multimillionaire teenagers. Only difference is, the negligent adults in my case were the ‘cool’ uncles or sketchy homeless guys who bought us cider and the ethically spurious shopkeepers who accepted horrendous fake IDs.
For young footballers it’s the agents who limpet on to their talent and offer them salaries their Standard Grade Maths can’t even begin to process (and that’s before we’ve started talking about bonuses, clauses, sponsorship or advertisements). It’s the big teams who sign them and root their potential to the reserve team bench; or the hometown clubs who put themselves in a position where they have to cash-in on their assets because of boardroom incompetence.
These are kids who weren’t alive when Nirvana split-up; you can’t offer them obscene amounts of money and then expect them to concentrate on football, and get pissy when they don’t fulfil their potential. There is a responsibility of agents and clubs to take into account the human being, not just the ability.
Of course, this wishy-washy, ‘love thy neighbour’ crap doesn’t actually work in real life. Football is a multi-trillion pound industry and it certainly didn’t get there without leaving a few stragglers by the wayside. Those in positions of power will say that it’s always been a performance-based industry – a buyer’s market – and charity will dilute the quality of the game. Emerging young talents are going to have to be exposed to the ‘real world’ sooner or later and the fact is, if they’re good enough to get paid as much as 20/30 year-olds, they should be expected to put up with the some pressures and constraints.
Fair enough, can’t really argue with that. Footballers’ wages are offered in direct relation to their perceived value, and if Hess…I mean Messi, is the best player in the world at 21, pay him accordingly. Attention however, has to be paid lower down the spectrum. Not everyone’s situation if different, and the Argentine maestro is quite clearly an exception in terms of talent. Not everyone is going to be as talented, lucky or, personality-wise, as down to earth. Some kind of structure therefore has to be set up.
Messi’s legend is well-known: brought over to Spain after being rejected by homeland-giants River Plate as being too weak, Barcelona paid for him to have hormone injections and next thing you know he’s up like a salmon, merkin’ Rio to head past Van der Sar in the Stadio Olympico. At five years old however, he started played for a team his dad managed, and when Rijkaard & co. came calling, his family relocated to Catalonia with him. He has thus always had people around him to keep his featherweight frame grounded and this is something that his humble demeanour and media-shyness is directly credited to.
Not every player is so lucky (or so naturally shy) however, and so at some point a ‘guardian’ has to be appointed to advise the player and (in theory) look out for their best interests. If not, less talented but more astute predators will begin to prey. This is where the problems start.
If you’ve never heard of him before, all you need to know about Kia Joorabchian is that he has two passports, each with a different name and different date of birth on it. He’s not actually a qualified football agent – describing himself (somewhat reluctantly you would feel) as an ‘advisor’ to players – and yet has been the lynchpin in some of the most lucrative and high-profile transfers in world football. He basically legally collects footballers.
Not in the sense of having a meticulously above-board Subbuteo hobby; but rather he goes around, like a cross between the Childcatcher and Rasputin, offering talented but impoverished footballers a seemingly princely, but in actual fact nominal, fee in return for their freedom of contract. He then ‘loans’ them out to clubs (and demands that 100% of their substantial wage demands to be paid) where they then make their name, and when the big boys come in with £30 mil, he pockets the transfer fee.
Clearly it’s not in anyone apart from these so-called agents’ best interest for players to be traded like shares in the City of London, and for me, this problem is best solved at its source. Make it illegal for an individual to be bought by another individual, and introducing a EU-wide ban on ‘advisors’ like Joorabchian. The big-money moves are to European football, so even if this law can’t be passed or realistically implicated on other continents, make it impossible to find anyone offering the money these people are looking for. If Platini only does one useful thing during his time in office, I really hope this is it (I also wonder if he’s even thought of having a camera on the goal line?).
The aforementioned ‘advisor’-types will undoubtedly point out that if this happens, the players will remain undiscovered or undeveloped because they will be forced to stay at their hometown clubs and never get an opportunity on the bigger stages. Big problem, with a simply answer: make their hometown clubs better.
Not by putting ads on the Middle Eastern Gumtree trying to find investors for Scunthorpe United and Elephant & Castle’s pub team, but spending the money constantly promised for youth development, on youth development, and getting the (minimal) existing infrastructure to communicate internally. Nationalise youth development in Home Nations and structure them more like France – who won the World Cup in 1998 & the Euros in 2000 – and Spain – who won the Euros in 2006 & and the World Cup in 2010. True, the former may have had a spot of bother in South Africa, but that was probably down to the fact they had a coach who couldn’t decide if he was Copernicus or Casanova; either way he was definitely more Chaplin than Clough.
Before that however, Les Bleus produced some of the finest world footballers of the last 30 years. This is partly because they can still poach players from their former colonies, but also because of the national football association’s infrastructure. And I don’t even need to talk about Spain’s youth set-up.
In France, youth players train at one of seven, well-funded, national academies during the week before returning to their local clubs at the weekend; in Spain it’s alternate weekends between representing their school team and their academy side. The emphasis is on plucking talent and training them at a higher level, but also letting the player return to their local teams so that the lower leagues’ standard is continually improving by having quality footballers playing in it. The academy communicates with the local teams to make sure their pupils are putting in a shift at the weekend, and also advises the managers which areas of the star player’s game could be improved, and also how the rest of the team could learn from/develop by playing with him.
Britain’s smaller than both France and Spain so it would be fairly easy to ensure all parts of the country had access to the academies, transport would be paid for, and if 14/15/16 year olds spent more time playing football and in a learning environment, not only will they become better players, they might not grow up to be the kind of guy who cheats on his missus with genks.
At the moment, unless a hot prospect is born near a nationally recognised academy (West Ham for example), someone ends up getting hurt as one of two scenarios play out. Either they sign for their local academy, who then train them but lose them to a bigger club on a free before they turn 17 and are eligible to sign a professional contract; or they sign a professional contract at their local team or another smaller side, show potential after a few first team appearances, and are snapped up for a nominal fee by a Premiership outfit, before rotting on the bench or being loaned out to a lower league than they initially started in.
The first instance seems grossly unfair: a team, with limited income, has invested time and money developing a talent, and received zero compensation for them. Understandably, the likes of Man U and Arsenal want to bring hot prospects in at an age where they can still significantly influence their development. The player is relatively unproven so they aren’t going to pay millions (unless it’s a Rooney or a Ramsey we’re talking about) and the youngster isn’t exactly going to turn down a chance to play for these teams. But because they’re under 17, their initial mentors, the smaller club, get paid zilch.
The second case harms both the youngster most because they don’t play anything like as much first-team football, and their talent therefore, unless exceptional, is squandered. Obviously there is an element of ‘if they’re good enough they’ll play’, but the focus can’t just be on producing exceptional footballers; England and Scotland need good 21 year olds just as much as they need exceptional ones. There’s not point in only bringing 11 world-class superstars through the ranks because, who are they going to play with/against? What’s going to happen when they get injured?
Also, not everyone develops into an outstanding player until later in life. Ian Wright didn’t sign professionally until he was nearly 22 (hope for yours truly, who obviously only hasn’t been called up by Fabio yet because the England scouts haven’t been down the Meadows recently), and without a decent standard of league, the exceptional footballers aren’t going to fulfil their full potential, because they’ll never come up against anyone who can really stretch their ability.
If a quality national academy could set-up, then players would be developed regionally with tabs being kept on exactly which youngsters came from which club. This would allow an element of parity to be maintained when professional contracts were offered because the original parent club would be given priority. The academy could also oversee contract negotiations, ensuring the inclusion of clauses stating a minimum number of appearances, to stop big clubs stockpiling and wasting youth prospects, whilst also ensuring the Rasputin-Childcatchers out there are completely excluded from British football.
The future of football is in having a world-class youth system – Spain and Germany taught us as much in South Africa this summer – and not just looking for the diamonds, but filtering out the slightly less precious (but no less useful) elements as well, in order to allow late developers to bloom and keep the young hot-shots constantly on their toes.
We need to be developing a Golden Generation, not a Golden 11 – look where having two world-class attacking midfielders has left England; we can’t bloody play both of them. Introducing a properly run, properly funded, nationwide footballing body, primarily devoted to ensuring what’s best for the youngsters (and by extension their national side), but who also seek to improve the standard of lower leagues, is essential if England (or Scotland) are ever going to make waves in internationally football again. That, and getting a few scouts up to Edinburgh ASAP, because I turn 22 soon and my ambitions will then turn to management.
