Catalan sports paper El Mundo Deportivo claims that Chelsea is closely monitoring five Barcelona youth players:
Barcelona Atlètic winger Gai Assulin (17), Barcelona Atlètic attacking midfielder Thiago Alcántara (17 - picture), Juvenil A central defender Marc Muniesa (16), Cadete A midfielder Rafael "Rafa" Alcántara (15) and Cadete A wing attacker Gerard Deulofeu (14).
Chelsea chief scout Hans Gillhaus, the right hand of Chelsea sports director Frank Arnesen, would have travelled to Madrid last week to meet - together with Chelsea head scout for Spain and Portugal Juan Cruz Sol - with Mazinho, the father of the two Alcántara brothers (read more here).
Catalan sports paper Sport claims that Chelsea is the favourite to sign Deulofeu if the player would decide to leave Barcelona (read more here). Liverpool and Arsenal are also interested.
Read more:
Barça B - Youth: Chelsea talks with father Thiago
Youth - Medical: Muniesa out until February
Youth: English top clubs following Deulofeu
Tuesday 7 October 2008
Youth: Chelsea all over Barcelona youth academy
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26 comments:
The UEFA should ban the teams eho buy players from youth academy because they do not want to spend money,time and place for young players and they take them from youth academy!
The UEFA should do something about this!
This is my opinion!
very good "jester" , agree with you!
I just read an article about it. Both FIFA and UEFA think there should be something done.
The FIFA proposal is the "6+5" rule, whereby every starting eleven should have at least 6 players of the country of the team. The European commission is opposed to that because it's against the free cicrulation of employees.
The UEFA proposal (which is supported by the European commission) is that every team should have at least 8 homegrown players in the squad (which should pressure the teams to invest in their own youth academy). This could be combined with a ban of transfer of players under 18.
Let's see if one of the two proposals gets through.
Well, if this rules will be applied, I think Barça should be the last club to worry about this.
Anyway, about banning transfers of players unter 18, how will Barça handle that? I mean, they of course buy/sign players under 18, even if they're just 12 or 13 years old and not fully developed (like at the age of 16,17).
I guess (they didn't went into details and don't know where they're aiming at) that it won't exclude every transfer of youth players.
I mean, then all players should stay with their local club until they're 18, then you're preventing those kids to get the best football education.
I agree with you that something must be done. But neither the FIFA nor the UEFA-propositions seems to taje care of the problem. When is the player "home-grown"? Where to draw the line? I think it is up to the spanish league to deal with this problem on their own. They have to fit the rules so that they is equivalent to Premier League and Serie A, at least. As it is now the La Liga-teams has a disadvantage compared to the other leagues. Fix that problem, and there is no problem =)
The best solution would be to give the spanish club (and others) the opportunity to give their youth players professional contracts. I think that all clubs should be able to give professional contracts at the same age. As it is now the english and italian clubs can come down to the spanish clubs, spread some money around and take the best talent with them and the spanish clubs can't do anything about it. Not only Barcelona have this problem, Atletico Madrid have a lot of talented youngsters and the english clubs are trying to poach them too.
I can promise you that Gai and Thiago will not be sold. They are likely to get some first team action next year. Rafa will want to stay as long as his borther stays. I have no clue about Muniesa's feelings but Deulofeu has publicly said he wants to stay at Barca.
But dont you think necessitating 8 homegrown players wud be unfair on the poorer clubs who cant afford to invest in the youth system or B teams? Also, wudnt it be against the spirit of the game, by not allowing the clubs to form teams as they see fit? In other words, team formation will become more rigid.
The other problem is money. It's hard to argue with money. If you're a talented youngster and a big-time club comes at you with money and promises of playing time (Cesc Fabregas), what are you going to do?
Barca is in a difficult situation right now with its talented youth players, in that there is a fairly young, solid rotation in the midfield. So you either try to work the lads in, figure out some way to keep them, or lose them to a better offer.
It's unfortunate, but it's life in the big city.
The FIFA 6+5 proposal is something else, rooted in disgruntlement at teams such as Arsenal, who play in the English league but don't start a single English player.
The proposal is pretty interesting, but disruptive and limiting, I think. We would be in great shape, with Messi (citzenship), Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta, Valdes, Pique, Busquets and the like. It would be pretty easy for us to hew to the rule.
But look at the Evil Empire's starting side from this past week, they would have needed to add 3 players to comply with the FIFA rule:
Casillas (y), Pepe (n), Canavarro (n), Heinze (n), Diarra (n), De La Red (y), Van der Vaart (n), Higuain (n), Raul (y); Van Nistelrooy (n).
Lord knows what sides such as Arsenal, AC Milan and the like would do.
The youth system thing is a whole 'nother matter. You could wind up with teams being able to suppress young talent, keeping them there until they are ready to play with the big boys, if ever. Not sure about that one, but that's where the talent management becomes incumbent upon the teams with good youth systems to do the work to maintain their future.
I don't think losing youth players will be as big a problem with Guardiola in charge, as it was with Rijkaard. Most of them still love the club, and if they know the first team is managed by a coach who is ready to give them a real chance, they aren't likely to leave, even if they are promised a lot more money by other clubs.
Proposals to limit player circulation between EU clubs are never ever going to be approved by the EU. Not even worth discussing, it just won't ever happen. Period. It is completely against the most important EU principle, being free trade and movement between member states.
If Chelsea can lure one of our prospects away I won't be happy about it, but I'll accept it because that's the way it works. Can't force a player to remain at one youth academy when in reality he wants to move to another.
disagree JR.. as was said earlier the first easiest an one of the most effective steps that can be taken now is to standardize the age at which youth players sign professional contracts... make it 16 or 17 or whatever but make it the same.. That way teams like barcelona are not fighting english teams who can offer our kids professional contracts and more money a year younger ( 16 vs 17). I am always upset when we loose talented youngsters but we steal players just like any other team.. except we go after 12 and 13 year olds.. which kind of makes us the pedophiles of the poaching world. hahah.. ( kidding relax people !) but seriously pep... I like the sound of that uefa proposal... did they define homegrown ( 3 years before 18) or some other stipulation like that ?
They should let Chelsea get the other Dos Santos we got rid of his brother now if only we could get rid of him and Marquez the club will be better off without these two Mexican!!They cant play and are lazy we need better player's hopefully more Catalan..
The rule already exist if a team compete in a european cup their squad of 25 players must consist of at least 3 "homegrown" players (3 seasons in the team before the age of 21 I think) and 6 players from the country. I don't think that means they have to be from the nation, just that they received their "education" there.
It already had effect on, for example, Liverpool that pretty much only went after brittish players this summer and had to drop Sami Hyypiä since he isn't "raised" in England.
Wow. Quite the comment. Jonathan dos Santos is actually quite talented. And Marquez is a lot of things, but lazy he is not.
Perhaps Barca should adopt the Athletic Bilbao program (Basques only) except with Catalans.
So. No Iniesta, or Messi, or Eto'o, of Marquez, or Alves, or Henry, or....you get it.
Not sure where that comment came from, Anonymous.
I cant be negative about chelsea, because barca essentially did the same thing with messi and does the same thing. However i think somebody needs to look at the issue of english clubs being able to offer 16 yr olds contracts while in spain and the rest of europe you have to wait till 17. Either europe needs to drop the age or england needs to raise theirs. Pep how are you my brother, keep up the good work
barca4life get your facts straight, messi sent in a video, he wanted to come to barca further more barca payed for his hormone therapy. Barcelona took a risk doing that, they didn't know if he would become the player that he is today and if he didnt they would have lost that money, so dont make out barca to be these horrible pedophiles (that goes for the rest of you who think of barca in that manner too).
furthermore if the why is mazinho even meeting with them?
Such a provocative headline, Pep!
@Kxevin: Can you please clarify this statement? I couldn't follow what you were trying to say about talent management. Thnx.
"he youth system thing is a whole 'nother matter. You could wind up with teams being able to suppress young talent, keeping them there until they are ready to play with the big boys, if ever. Not sure about that one, but that's where the talent management becomes incumbent upon the teams with good youth systems to do the work to maintain their future."
"did they define homegrown ( 3 years before 18) or some other stipulation like that ?"
I read earlier that there is something to define "homegrown", Marc. Guess it will be something like you say.
Like JR says: "Proposals to limit player circulation between EU clubs are never ever going to be approved by the EU. Not even worth discussing, it just won't ever happen. Period. It is completely against the most important EU principle, being free trade and movement between member states."
Although I have to add that it's not as period as you claim, JR. There are excpetions possible but you should get a decent reason for that.
But the "6+5" limit can no way go through in the Euopean Union. Unless those "6" are "European" and not (in barcelona's case) "Spanish" like in the FIFA proposal, that's possible.
barca aficionado, what about the kids from cameroon that etoo recommended. They left africa at an early age to come to barca, but according to you more importantly they wanted to come to barca so its ok. Suppose chelsea offers our youth players a big bag of money and they cant get a contract from barca because they are under 17. Will they not want to go to chelsea? Are we to then let them go for nothing?
Player from small teams is not the same, Barca4life.
You cannot compare a player from a local Catalan club or a Cameroon club coming to Barcelona (or Chelsea). That's a normal process.
The thing that's not correct are the transfers between European top clubs, where clubs having the same level buy players from others.
it seems like a (perhaps too simple) rule would be that if you're in an organization with a EPL/Liga/Serie A/etc. top club, you can't be poached before the age of 16. You can, however, be poached by a team with such a connection if you're on a small local club.
i just want to say
"Player from small teams is not the same, Barca4life.
You cannot compare a player from a local Catalan club or a Cameroon club coming to Barcelona (or Chelsea). That's a normal process.
The thing that's not correct are the transfers between European top clubs, where clubs having the same level buy players from others."
DJOEF totaly agree!!!!!!
so it is okay if a bigger club gets it's youth players from smaller clubs that have a significant lesser talent pool due to those transfers, but it's not ok if one big club gets it's youth players from another big club?
that is everything but a fair trade
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