Cardiff City set to lose another youngster to Man City

[Cardiff Ultra]

This really grinds my gears. EPPP has been a disaster; it has simply enabled the top clubs to hoover up talent for pennies with no intention of playing them, and then sell them on to boost their income for financial fair play.

The idea that going to a top club will magically improve a youngster is garbage. They will never be on the same training ground as the top players and will be effectively sacrificing first team football for playing academy football at a nicer facility.

Thats before you even get into the morality of offering minors and/or their parents financial inducements.

Matando is a classic case. Signed by Man City off us for nothing after (alleged) financial inducements, never played for them but made them a tidy £8 million when they sold him to Schalke. Now he's kicking his heels on Rangers bench. Can anyone seriously suggest going to play in a slightly nicer academy was better for his career than staying at city and playing first team football?

[Pedro de la Rosa]

So why not make it compulsory that any player that has compensation payout automatically has a 50% sell on clause?

Re this, and other comments, the system is not broken. It is working exactly as intended, to favour the big clubs. I don’t like it, most people don’t but there’s bugger all we can do about it and it isn’t going to change.

[the other bob wilson]

This really grinds my gears. EPPP has been a disaster; it has simply enabled the top clubs to hoover up talent for pennies with no intention of playing them, and then sell them on to boost their income for financial fair play.

The idea that going to a top club will magically improve a youngster is garbage. They will never be on the same training ground as the top players and will be effectively sacrificing first team football for playing academy football at a nicer facility.

Thats before you even get into the morality of offering minors and/or their parents financial inducements.

Matando is a classic case. Signed by Man City off us for nothing after (alleged) financial inducements, never played for them but made them a tidy £8 million when they sold him to Schalke. Now he's kicking his heels on Rangers bench. Can anyone seriously suggest going to play in a slightly nicer academy was better for his career than staying at city and playing first team football?

Man City got around thirty two times more than they paid for Matondo and they certainly didn’t improve him by thirty two per cent, let alone three thousand two hundred per cent - in fact, did they improve Matondo at all? Having watched Matondo in quite a few games between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, I’d say he was unplayable at youth levels when he was allowed to use his pace and running power, but his team didn’t benefit as much as they should have because he often made poor decisions after having created an opportunity through that pace and power.

Matondo wasn’t alone in age group football in not making the correct decisions, but, as he was in his mid teens, I thought the footballing intelligence he lacked would eventually come through working in a professional footballing environment every day once he turned sixteen. This should have become even more true when he signed for what might be called the best modern day team and manager in the world and yet Matondo, now 23, remains someone who struggles to make the right decisions and, unbelievably given the hype over him around the time I was watching him play for us, I’d say he’d struggle to get in the current City team. Pace is so important in the modern game, but pace alone isn’t enough, Man City and Guardiola failed badly with Matondo, but they probably don’t view him that way given the huge profit they made on him.

[Citizen's Nephew]

Man City got around thirty two times more than they paid for Matondo and they certainly didn’t improve him by thirty two per cent, let alone three thousand two hundred per cent - in fact, did they improve Matondo at all? Having watched Matondo in quite a few games between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, I’d say he was unplayable at youth levels when he was allowed to use his pace and running power, but his team didn’t benefit as much as they should have because he often made poor decisions after having created an opportunity through that pace and power.

Matondo wasn’t alone in age group football in not making the correct decisions, but, as he was in his mid teens, I thought the footballing intelligence he lacked would eventually come through working in a professional footballing environment every day once he turned sixteen. This should have become even more true when he signed for what might be called the best modern day team and manager in the world and yet Matondo, now 23, remains someone who struggles to make the right decisions and, unbelievably given the hype over him around the time I was watching him play for us, I’d say he’d struggle to get in the current City team. Pace is so important in the modern game, but pace alone isn’t enough, Man City and Guardiola failed badly with Matondo, but they probably don’t view him that way given the huge profit they made on him.

👍really good post Bob.

[LA Bluebird]

As others have more elequently said, it's basically a stock market now, if you can take a young player for 250k, give him enough hype and a bit of game time in competitions that don't matter to you and then sell him on for even 5-10x that, it can fund a new player purchase against FFP for 100x the original investment if you amortize it over enough years. Which is probably an unintended side effect of FFP but also inevitable that the big clubs would find these kinds of loopholes, something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

It is a shame and a scandal that so many young players will find their careers ruined as a result while the original clubs who put so much money into developing them get a pittance. You wish they were getting better advice, but equally for these kids is there anything over the last 10-15 years with City to suggest that staying here would be a better path to a career in the top 2 divisions?

[PontBlue]

Any change to the rules would probably require the votes of the likes of man city so would not get through similar to the distribution of wealth issue that keeps getting kicked down the road as they don't want to give it away and I am assuming if we had any stay at the top table we would think the same way

This is a similar situation to the distribution of wealth issue that the regulator is going to have to step in and sort out as turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

Hopefully Fans Groups will be able to lobby the Independent Football Regulator to also take a look at this issue as it affects the sustainability of the football pyramid as it's allowing bigger clubs to pick up talented youngsters on the cheap and thereby denying smaller clubs of appropriate recompense.

[Citizen's Nephew]

This is a similar situation to the distribution of wealth issue that the regulator is going to have to step in and sort out as turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

Hopefully Fans Groups will be able to lobby the Independent Football Regulator to also take a look at this issue as it affects the sustainability of the football pyramid as it's allowing bigger clubs to pick up talented youngsters on the cheap and thereby denying smaller clubs of appropriate recompense.

I'm deeply skeptical of fan groups and anything that doesn't give fans a monetary (and legal) stake in the club. Ideally, I'd like to see all football clubs be at least 50% fan-owned. I'd like to see it as part of the FA requirement for acquisition and management. No matter the size of the club. It'll get shot down in flames but so what? It doesn't make it the wrong thing to do. Better than global syndicates buying stakes in local history and our communities.

[Citizen's Nephew]

Re this, and other comments, the system is not broken. It is working exactly as intended, to favour the big clubs. I don’t like it, most people don’t but there’s bugger all we can do about it and it isn’t going to change.

Fans staying away and empty stadiums would work. We don't realise the power we have tbh. Radical change only happens with radical actions and convictions.

[LA Bluebird]

Fans staying away and empty stadiums would work. We don't realise the power we have tbh. Radical change only happens with radical actions and convictions.

How would that solve anything? The big clubs would sell out to tourists and the prawn sandwich brigade if nobody who lived within 50 miles of them went to games, and even if in the long run ticket sales suffered they get hundreds of millions from TV rights and European competition. The only thing fans staying away would do is kill football below the Prem and convince a lot of owners to walk away for good.

I think the depth of feeling over the Super League caught owners by surprise and they weren't ready to win the PR battle on short notice but was it to come up again in a year or two, I have no doubt it would succeed this time. Just look at what is going on at Man U and Spurs in the last few days, the fans don't matter in the slightest to these owners. Anyone who thinks the common fan has any say (at least outside of Germany) is clinging to nostalgia.

[Citizen's Nephew]

How would that solve anything? The big clubs would sell out to tourists and the prawn sandwich brigade if nobody who lived within 50 miles of them went to games, and even if in the long run ticket sales suffered they get hundreds of millions from TV rights and European competition. The only thing fans staying away would do is kill football below the Prem and convince a lot of owners to walk away for good.

I think the depth of feeling over the Super League caught owners by surprise and they weren't ready to win the PR battle on short notice but was it to come up again in a year or two, I have no doubt it would succeed this time. Just look at what is going on at Man U and Spurs in the last few days, the fans don't matter in the slightest to these owners. Anyone who thinks the common fan has any say (at least outside of Germany) is clinging to nostalgia.

I disagree. Empty grounds outside of these so-called super-clubs would be a massive message, a terrible look for the game. There's no point moaning about things and not doing something. I'm not talking about something that isn't coordinated between all the fanbases of all the clubs. It could happen. The professional game and clubs are dying below the top half of the PL and CL anyway. I'm not clinging to nostalgia. I'm clinging to collective power. We have it. We just don't use it.

[bluebirds17]

This really grinds my gears. EPPP has been a disaster; it has simply enabled the top clubs to hoover up talent for pennies with no intention of playing them, and then sell them on to boost their income for financial fair play.

The idea that going to a top club will magically improve a youngster is garbage. They will never be on the same training ground as the top players and will be effectively sacrificing first team football for playing academy football at a nicer facility.

Thats before you even get into the morality of offering minors and/or their parents financial inducements.

Matando is a classic case. Signed by Man City off us for nothing after (alleged) financial inducements, never played for them but made them a tidy £8 million when they sold him to Schalke. Now he's kicking his heels on Rangers bench. Can anyone seriously suggest going to play in a slightly nicer academy was better for his career than staying at city and playing first team football?

It was obvious as soon as they announced the changes it was going to result in a monopoly by the big clubs.

Look at Liverpool for example, everyone was raving about their academy the other week but how many of those kids were poached by other clubs.

The FA have allowed football in this country to die a slow death in favour of the short term gains of making the premier league the most attractive league. Clubs have little chance now unless you are fortunate to get a billionaire to back you and even then FFP still stands in your way.

Academies are the life blood of the game and unfortunately they are becoming less and less attractive to clubs outside the top flight. Brentford did away with theirs until they became solidified in the premier league and I can see more clubs doing the same. It's going to have a significant long term impact on the game if lower league clubs are no longer seeing a beneficial return on the investment they put into developing an academy.

[dandywarhol]

How many Man city academy players make it to the first team.
If Wilson-Esbrand is anything to go by not many.