potential vs experience

is potential to be very good now more important that already being quite good?

in the last 10 years top clubs have spent big money signing top young players for the future and artificially developing them instead of signing established older players, who are already pretty good. Is this stupid or does it work?

Looking at the fees paid for the likes of Ryan Babel, Jose Antonio Reyes, Zoran Tosic, Anderson, Nani, Mame Biram Diouf, Adem Ljajic, Kevin Elias Boateng, Royston Drenthe and co, only to see them benched or fail makes me wonder if this trend is ruining football.

Instead of paying over the odds for someone who might one day become very good, imagine if you spent that money on someone who is already quite good.

Would these players have a better chance of fulfilling their potential if they progressed more naturally through the ranks?

Denílson de Oliveira would be an early example, but there are countless. As the trend now sees a famous generation of faded, unfulfilled wonderkids reach their 30's who are the players who benefitted? The wonderkids who stayed in spite of massive interest and moved at the right time (Fernando Torres) the ones who moved early but succeeded (Rooney, Ronaldo) and who were the ones who stayed and became forgotten? (Cherno Samba)

I believe economic conditions in the game lend themselves kindly to investing in young talent.

The player clearly has a high potential re-sale value, lower wages, ability to be groomed commercially etc, not to mention the fees generally are lower than purchasing an established international. There is of course also the investment opportunity of getting young players of school leaving age where signing on fees are nominal another economic benefit, although this strategy is risk bearing because there are no guarantees, the potential sale of one top class youngster can justify the many brought into the youth systems ala Arsenal.

With regards to player development, theres nothing wrong with learning your trade in the youth teams and reserve teams for a period at a top club, as the player gets all the benefits that a club of such stature can provide with regards to training, education and marketing. However there is a fine balancing act of recognising first team football is ultimately pivatol to the development of the individual and if the young player does not get the break through into the first team, they have to know when the right time to leave is which in itself introduces issues for the player as any future club interested may not be the most suitable for the player, however with no other options may have no choice in persuit of first team football.

the origins are pretty clear, buy a top youngster for £500,000 because otherwise he would cost you £5m when he's 24 and hits the world stage

but smaller clubs soon got wise to this and the price started getting upped so you're then seeing young players going for £5m because otherwise he would cost you £10m when he's 24 and hits the world stage

and so now it gets more competitive and you see players like Anderson and Nani going for £18m, because otherwise they would cost you £35m when he's 24 and hits the world stage

but suddenly it's got to the point where it's no longer about economics, because the amount that the top clubs waste on these so called wonderkids would buy 10 whole teams for other clubs, and invariably they end up spending the money they thought they were saving by buying players from the smaller clubs while the wonderkids waste away and end up with Allardyce

The big clubs are losing out because by taking these boys out of the oven before they're done, they waste the best talent and more often than not they end up spending double what they would have if they'd just left the process alone.

Hammered

In my opinion there are a lot of factors contributing to this problem but, yes, I do think in many ways it is ruining football. In theory it would be a good idea to buy younger players before they are the finished product. Take for example Kaka. Jorge Valdano recommended we sign him before the 2002 WC when he was still in Sao Paulo. A year later Milan bought him 8,5m euro when he was 21. Now, seven years later we pay 67m euro for him. So if only we had bought him back then we would have saved 60m euro or so. The problems is that as soon as big clubs started buying these young players, the smaller clubs that were developing the players came to the perfectly normal conclusion that they would demand just compensation. And before too long you get to the point that Glenn describes where we pay 14m for Royston f*cking Drenthe who barely played any matches with the first team of Feyenoord but had 4 good games in a Euro U-20 tournament and suddenly is coming to Real Madrid at the age of 19 before he is anywhere near ready. But now this is the problem. Not only is a club like Real Madrid getting an unfinished player, but now they are paying as if he is the finished player. So there is really no advantage any more to this methodology. Unless you have superb scouting and you really do find a completely undiscovered player that you can get for nothing. But that doesn't really seem to be happening.

Here is another example. We paid 20m euro for Fernando Gago when he was 20 years old. He comes and is has his ups and downs and everyone wants to know why he doesn't boss the midfield like the player everyone compared him to when he first arrived, Fernando Redondo. But here is the difference. When Redondo arrived to Madrid he had already spent his formative years playing in Argentinos Juniors, his first stop in Europe was with modest Tenerife and finally at the age of 25 he was ready for a big club. But this would never happen today. Because the big clubs know that if they wait for the player to go through the appropriate apprenticeship and stages of formation they are going to have to pay millions for them.

I have to say that I think there is also a big problem with agents as well. Because they fill the heads of their clients with the wrong ideas. They tell these young players that at the age of 19 they should be commanding a first team place and so you get players that demand to leave. The agents tell them they are Maradona before they have even done anything. There is very little patience on the part of young players any more either.

So you've got young players wanting to move earlier, you've got big clubs wanting to buy them earlier and then what you end up with is top flight clubs filled with players that in all reality should be in the B teams or maybe on loan with a smaller team to get experience. It ruins the players and it ruins the football.

In this sense when Kimbo is always going on about the need for some regulation in the transfer market he is probably correct. And also I think that rules like 6+5 can help too because at least it will prevent a lot of players from moving abroad too soon.

First of all I think Babel & Drenthe are stupid. They should have realised they weren't good enough to get enough playing time at the top clubs they were going to. In the end it's about playing matches, not about training with superstars, if you want to improve.

Do think the clubs they went to were stupid too. Both were seriously overrated. Even if they would have been as good as the hype, it would be better after signing them to let them play elsewhere. Much better for their development, so in the end financially too. For both sides, club & player.

Elsewhere shouldn't be Championship. Their are other ways of toughening up a player. Let them play for a top club in a smaller league let Chelski did with Alex & PSV

Think it's a pity topclubs use young players as cover. So many Vela's playing too little. Players & those, who advise them, should be smarter too & make sure development is key.

Only the very talented ones should go to big clubs early.

Wih Babel & Drenthe, Pool & Real shoot themselves in the foot twice, 1st when they signed them & thereafter by keeping them.

FIFA's new association trained rule is going to make this problem even worse

take Liverpool for example

Benitez has taken thousands of talented young kids from around Europe and put them in the Liverpool academy, because FIFA rules now dictate that a certain number of players will have to have come through his academy. Without a doubt these boys would be better off let where they are, being on the fringes of your senior team in Hungary or Denmark, playing with and against men is surely going to be better for your development that being on the fringes of an academy side, playing with and against other boys.

In the case of Babel, he did get a run in the first team and was signed as first choice, but has been displaced by older more experience and cheaper signings in Benayoun and Riera (whose combined fees are less than Babel's)

Signing young players like Babel, Nani etc does make sense for the slightly smaller clubs, as once they have developed there would naturally be a profit in the sell on fee, but by trying to bypass this process the big clubs are missing out, because there are only a handful of cases where it has really worked out.

It's better for the players too. It still would make sense if Babel & Nani were WC, but that still remains to be seen, Babel certainly isn't & will never be.

Jay Glenno wrote:FIFA's new association trained rule is going to make this problem even worse

take Liverpool for example

Benitez has taken thousands of talented young kids from around Europe and put them in the Liverpool academy, because FIFA rules now dictate that a certain number of players will have to have come through his academy. Without a doubt these boys would be better off let where they are, being on the fringes of your senior team in Hungary or Denmark, playing with and against men is surely going to be better for your development that being on the fringes of an academy side, playing with and against other boys.

In the case of Babel, he did get a run in the first team and was signed as first choice, but has been displaced by older more experience and cheaper signings in Benayoun and Riera (whose combined fees are less than Babel's)

Signing young players like Babel, Nani etc does make sense for the slightly smaller clubs, as once they have developed there would naturally be a profit in the sell on fee, but by trying to bypass this process the big clubs are missing out, because there are only a handful of cases where it has really worked out.

I agree which is why the rule should really include a restriction to make them have to be domestic academy trained players.

Jaime wrote:In my opinion there are a lot of factors contributing to this problem but, yes, I do think in many ways it is ruining football. In theory it would be a good idea to buy younger players before they are the finished product. Take for example Kaka. Jorge Valdano recommended we sign him before the 2002 WC when he was still in Sao Paulo. A year later Milan bought him 8,5m euro when he was 21. Now, seven years later we pay 67m euro for him. So if only we had bought him back then we would have saved 60m euro or so. The problems is that as soon as big clubs started buying these young players, the smaller clubs that were developing the players came to the perfectly normal conclusion that they would demand just compensation. And before too long you get to the point that Glenn describes where we pay 14m for Royston f*cking Drenthe who barely played any matches with the first team of Feyenoord but had 4 good games in a Euro U-20 tournament and suddenly is coming to Real Madrid at the age of 19 before he is anywhere near ready. But now this is the problem. Not only is a club like Real Madrid getting an unfinished player, but now they are paying as if he is the finished player. So there is really no advantage any more to this methodology. Unless you have superb scouting and you really do find a completely undiscovered player that you can get for nothing. But that doesn't really seem to be happening.

Here is another example. We paid 20m euro for Fernando Gago when he was 20 years old. He comes and is has his ups and downs and everyone wants to know why he doesn't boss the midfield like the player everyone compared him to when he first arrived, Fernando Redondo. But here is the difference. When Redondo arrived to Madrid he had already spent his formative years playing in Argentinos Juniors, his first stop in Europe was with modest Tenerife and finally at the age of 25 he was ready for a big club. But this would never happen today. Because the big clubs know that if they wait for the player to go through the appropriate apprenticeship and stages of formation they are going to have to pay millions for them.
I have to say that I think there is also a big problem with agents as well. Because they fill the heads of their clients with the wrong ideas. They tell these young players that at the age of 19 they should be commanding a first team place and so you get players that demand to leave. The agents tell them they are Maradona before they have even done anything. There is very little patience on the part of young players any more either.

So you've got young players wanting to move earlier, you've got big clubs wanting to buy them earlier and then what you end up with is top flight clubs filled with players that in all reality should be in the B teams or maybe on loan with a smaller team to get experience. It ruins the players and it ruins the football.

In this sense when Kimbo is always going on about the need for some regulation in the transfer market he is probably correct. And also I think that rules like 6+5 can help too because at least it will prevent a lot of players from moving abroad too soon.

Buy them young and loan them to another team to gain the experience needed, then bring them in whwn time is right.

If a club buys 10 youngstars and 9 of them fails they still can be the big winners if 1 superstar breaks through! So club wise it is most of the times a great investment to buy a dozen of talents with the notion that the chance one is good enough for the top is quite big...

terrible development me thinks... (especially for the minor leagues)

Without reading the full thread, I think that the reason big money and tabloid columns are going on younger 'talents' rather than established stars is the breakaway of the top few clubs. Once a player is at Man Utd, Real, Barca, Chelsea, Bayern, AC, its mainly about whether the club wants to keep them, rather than how much cash can be raised.

With the younger players they are more open to a big money move to a Man City or another cash rich, history poor club.

The scatter-gun approach big clubs can afford to use is perhaps damaging for the game as a whole - but there are always roughly the same number of places available at the top - so if one kid ends up plying trade in lower leagues after failing as youngster at somewhere like Man Utd, someone else who held out longer and worked way up 'naturally' may take his spot..

Bit of a hedge-sitting answer but I think it depends a lot on player's personality. Some kids have the drive that when they go to big club and find themselves alongside fully developed world class players that they want to improve themselves and fulfil potential - others don't seem to be able the shift from being the best player around at a smaller club/lower level and stagnate. These ones perhaps showed 'false potential' - if you have world class skills but not the accompanying winning attitude, you were never really going to be world class.

It can also be luck either way - timing is crucial (e.g. injury crisis gives you a chance sooner than thought, or someone else's good form keeps you out the team, or manager gets fired at wrong time, etc.) - this can be make or break you, and is totally out of your hands. But still attitude and how you bounce back from setbacks will define where you end up. There are some players people widely mock (e.g. John O'Shea) but there's no way they'd be in the position they're in without having exceptional attitude. There may be hundreds of more 'talented' players who don't make it at Man Utd, but ultimately personality is a big part of potential.

Oh and also I suppose physical development is another place where 'false potential' can exist - e.g. you can have all the skills in the world, but if you stop growing at 5'4 and get injured easily, you're very unlikely to make it at the top.

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Slightly tangential & speculative but earlier this yr watched film called Sugar about youngsters trying to make it in baseball - and the way they are treated as they try and move to major leagues. Struck me that it's probably not dissimilar to what's happening with some kids being imported en masse at top clubs. You see 'oh Liverpool have signed four 16 yo Hungarians' - and basically Liverpool have pretty little stake in them as people - if they do well, brilliant, they've got a bargain & everyone wins - but if not, just chuck 'em out, there's another half dozen they can pick up just as cheap next summer. Baseball teams import Dominicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans by the bus-load. You can kinda see that happening on smaller scale in football.

So I think it would be good to have some sort of limits on transfers to increase player's value to these clubs & force them to have more of a stake in anyone they sign (not picking on Liverpool in particular - I don't really know which clubs are good and bad at this sort of thing, they're just one of the teams who seem to have signed a heck of a lot of young foreign players last few yrs)