There are those who say that pre teens should not play any competitive football, the emphasis should be on building skills and awareness. I can understand that to a point, but this season there has been a competitive element brought into matches played by our Under nine to Under eleven sides and it seems they have excelled at it.
http://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/news/...t-3716525.aspx
This news supports my feeling that City's youth development record is good at most age groups, but tapers off as you reach Under 18 level as youngsters who were very impressive when compared to those at other clubs fail to succeed in the final, and most important, stage of their development - the transition into the physically demanding world of the senior game.
Do the players we produce just not kick on when they really need to after a serene progression through the Under nine to Under sixteen levels, or is there a culture at the club that says most, if not all, of our teenagers are not good enough to play in the Championship, let's keep them in the Development team or loan them out for a year or two and then see what they look like.
Certainly until this season, I would argue that there was a strong element of the latter at Cardiff (let's face it, we are by no means the only team at our level who think like that), but, increasingly, in these days where the haves get richer and the have nots are left to fend for themselves, the attitude whereby Championship clubs (particularly those who have never had parachute payments or are reaching the end of such hand outs) behave as if they are in the Premier League already and look to the transfer market all of the time when there is a vacancy in the first team squad has to be a potentially damaging thing to do?
The selection of Mark Harris in the first team and, even moreso, the apparent intended inclusion of sixteen year old Sion Spence in the squad for the Huddersfield match offers the possibility that things are changing at City and not before time either - Ajax are one of the best examples around of a club where the best young players are given their chance of first team football about half a decade before they would be likely to get such an opportunity in the Premier League or at many Championship teams.
If there is any justice, Ajax will beat Man United in the Europa League Final. On the one hand, you have an exciting and vibrant young side that just goes out with the aim of scoring more goals than the opposition and, on the other, you have a club that boasts support, resources and finances that their opponents could only dream of - a club that have appointed a "special" manager who only works at teams that give him the opportunity to spend tens of millions of pounds on a single player, a club that has spent more than any other in the world on a single player and yet his sides always play a cynical, defensive game where possession of the football is almost discouraged because that's how you make the mistakes that your opponent can profit from.
Football needs more clubs like Ajax and, if they could end the season with a Europa Cup win, it would send out a signal that developing, and then actually playing, your own youngsters doesn't have to mean that you have given up on winning the game's biggest prizes.
Obviously, City will probably never be able to replicate what Ajax have made a habit of doing down the years, but I would love it if we were able to establish ourselves as a club which has a reputation for developing youngsters and then turning them into good senior players. I'd say that, currently, our reputation is the complete opposite of that, but, as stories like the one in the link above shows, it looks like we are still able to attract kids whose abilities compare favourably with others of the same age at other clubs - the talent is definitely there in this area, we just need to get a lot better at turning boys into men in the final stages of the youth development procedure.
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
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