The Ivy League of Football Academies

Some time ago, a friend and I were discussing youth power in football and how an academy brings out talent time and again. I thought this would be an interesting topic to write on though it has been thrown around quite a bit in the blogosphere already. But, given that it’s international weekend, Phil Jones has been prompted as a future England captain, and Jack Wilshere is causing people the age of his Dad sweat over him, it sounds appropriate to devote something to the Next Gen. In this post I have given my opinion on the best youth academies from across the footballing world, so here it goes…

(Note: Before I begin, I’m not talking about the over hyped La Mass Cheating academy, enough about them already)

West Ham

 The queenies’ favourite club is by far the best feeder club in the whole of the premier league; despite them being relegated they have given the premier league a lot of great talent. I have a soft corner for West Ham; they have the knack of rearing little colts into skillful thorough bred ones. A few examples of this are the legendary Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst in the glory days of English football and more recently Frank Lampard, @rioferdy5 (btw his new app is out and the man is tweeting like a mad virus), Joe Cole, Jermaine Defoe and more recently Mark Noble and James Collison. This isn’t called ‘THE ACADEMY OF FOOTBALL’ for nothing

And they sold me to the army

Crew Alexandra FC

This academy has been churning out an equal number of good graduates over the years like current Celtic manager Neil Lennon, current Man City first team Coach David Platt and ex-Derby and United player Robbie Savage. More recently this academy has been creating players like Dean Ashton, David Vaughan, and Danny Murphy are some of the players who were part of the Crewe at one point of time.

AFC Ajax

Barring the the “La Messia”, Ajax’s youth setup A.K.A the Jong Ajax has been producing world class talents and sublime exponents of the game. Their youth academy is not exactly a feeder unit because a lot of players stayed on and won the club a lot of laurels. The 1995 Champions League team consisted of some brilliant players like Edwin Van Der Sar, Frank and Ronald De Boer, Frank Rijkaard, Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Patrick Kluivert who were products of the Jong. This academy also boasts of some brilliant coaches like Louis Van Gaal and Marco Van Basten who learnt their managerial trade here before becoming bigger things. Johann Cryuff is easily their biggest academy product but the man became more of a Catalonian and went off to develop the biggest cheat producing academy. A few recent products of this academy are Rafael Van Der Vaart, Marten Steklenburg, Wesley Sneijder, Nigel De jong, John Heitenga and Gregory Van Der Wiel, who all have international caps to their name.’

Homegrown UCL winners

FK Partizan Belgrade

This is easily the second best to the Jong academy in rearing players and making them into stars. The products of this setup are called the ‘PARTIZANOVE BEBES’ and they have never failed in producing hard working and talented players. They also have a tie-up with the Boca Juniors academy (that has produced talents Fernando Gago, and the Argentine mad-cap Carlos Tevez to name a few) to improve the output even more. A few players from this setup are Stefan Jovetic and Adem Lajijic (both of them play for Fiorentina now), Miralem Sulejmani( now at Ajax) and former red Zoran Tosic (now at CSKA Moscow) .

Everton

Everton are a superb club, with the little money they have they cannot expect to sign big names and so they have this policy, “If you can’t buy them, make them”. This has given them a lot of success and they have been constant challengers for a Europa league spot .The current squad boasts of academy products like Phil Jagielka, Leon Osman and Tony Hibbert to name a few. They have also created a new super-star who goes by the name of Ross Barkley who is already being watched by the ever buying City (who can be called the footballing worlds Kardashian family because of their love for shopping). Also from this factory is England and Manchester’s very own Wayne Rooney.

Other Mentions

Sporting Lisbon – Quite obviously for producing Luis Figo, CR7 and Nani. They have also produced players like Joao Moutinho, Ricardo Queresma and Simao

Man City – Yes they shop like the Kardashians, but they have failed to look into their own backyard which has produced names like Joey Barton, Shaun Wright Philips and Stephen Ireland. Current first teamer Micah Richards was also part of City’s youth academy.

And that’s a wrap! No doubt there’s many clubs from Latin America which do an excellent job at player development, and a few more continental European ones that have been missed as well. It’s unfortunate that they’re not as widely known as some of the above, and for the sake of footballing development in the future, we can only hope more ‘home-grown teams’ turn out to be world beaters…

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