Arsènal
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There is no mention of Cesc Fabregas, Gaël Clichy, Abou Diaby, Denilson and Philippe Senderos, all of whom joined the club as teenagers. Theo Walcott famously came from Southampton at the age of 16. Where is the academy contribution to their development? The conclusion has to be that these kids were immediately drafted into the first-team squad due to Arsène Wenger’s belief that, unlike their contemporaries, their innate ability marked them out as special (probably epitomised in his eyes by the initial impression Fabregas made on him, “At 16, to say no to Barcelona and yes to Arsenal, it was really astonishing. I was very curious to know exactly what type of kid is this to say to Barcelona ‘you didn’t treat me with enough consideration, I am going’.”) He also believed that prolonged exposure to the coaching, even of his own staff, away from his watchful eye might fail to bring the best out of them.
Is it a coincidence that of the recent graduates listed by the club, none became established first-team players, and only three – Djourou, Hoyte and Bendtner – are still at the club (all of whom, having experienced a spell on the outside, may yet be sold rather than start on a regular basis)? A cynic might believe that the importance attached to the academy nowadays is the result of the regulations regarding quotas of home-developed players (eight out of the permitted 25 in the squad at present) necessary in UEFA competitions. Because they were teenagers when they arrived, Cesc Fabregas and Theo Walcott fulfil the necessary qualifications despite, in all likelihood, rarely coming into contact with Liam Brady and the academy coaching team. So it is never going to be difficult for Arsenal to make up the requisite numbers in the Champions League squad, even if few of them these days are English.
Relaxing at his north London home, Wenger is prepared to submit to a friendly interrogation regarding his propensity for foreign youngsters.
“It is true [that Arsenal has more foreign youngsters] – but what you always have to consider is how you produce a player. If you want to completely develop a player, ideally you take him at the age of five and you bring him right through to the first team. But the reality is that he arrives at your club [much later] at 16 or 17. If you look at the top clubs in Europe, Arsenal is producing more young players than any of them.”
He is defensive when it is put to him that of all the major clubs in Europe, Arsenal has more foreigners than any other, retorting, “Yes, but what I don’t understand in that is that it looks always like an accusation – why?”
“Because there would be closer identification between the fans and the team if there were more nationals, that’s why,” responds his questioner.
“Maybe you are right,” he counters, “but I am against this idea. I think the identification should be with the quality of your display, with the spectacle you produce and the values you want to represent. And not with your passport. Maybe my thinking is not traditionalist enough, but I believe that sport can unite the world and can be an idea of what a modern society will be tomorrow. And if we regress and say ‘OK, we keep all the foreign players out and the foreign coaches’, I am not against that because I can go home and work at home. But I believe as well the same people, if tomorrow they have to watch the Premier League with only local players, they would be disenchanted. So it is always ‘OK, we like what you play, we like what you do but we want that with English players’. I’m sorry, I’m not capable to produce it at the moment. I hope I will be one day but at the moment I cannot do it. And I do feel guilty for not doing that, but on the other hand I feel as well that for me the justice in sport is if tomorrow you live in South Africa and you grow up and you train to be a footballer in the best league in the world, that you get the chance to achieve it. That’s what I think is beautiful. If somebody says ‘Sorry my friend, you cannot play with the best players because you have not the right passport’, for me it’s not really sport.”
Wenger can get away with such a view because his team is successful, overcoming the natural conservatism and insularity of supporters. His view is a more optimistic one of human nature than many experience in the stands at a match. He feels, “Fans can as well be educated. Five per cent of the most regressive sometimes expresses their opinion but it doesn’t mean it’s the majority. It takes time but I still believe that our fans are quite educated. I agree there is a price to pay, but at the moment the balance is not completely right because we should produce more local players, but the big clubs will always have problems now to win and to produce that. Why? Because you can only scout in a small area and the big clubs cannot only do that.”
Scout Tony Banfield is adamant. “Football in Europe cannot be viewed as being English, French or German anymore – it’s European,” he says. “We can’t go backwards. And if English kids don’t reach the required level we will use those from other countries.” He is however optimistic that progress will be made on the home front. “Regarding the produce of Arsenal’s academy gaining first team places, it will get better. We will have players who come into the side in the future.”
As a former defender now back in the fold as a youth coach, Steve Bould forecasts there will be more ‘locals’ in the future, citing Kieran Gibbs, Mark Randall and Henri Lansbury (despite the spelling of his first name) as local boys with the potential to make good, allowing Bould to ponder, “Maybe that eight-year cycle is coming to fruition now. Maybe the academy set up is starting to produce. Over the next few years, we might see a bundle of these kids getting in their first teams, not just here but throughout the country.” These youngsters are probably the first batch to have overcome the English malaise of poor coaching in their formative years and will arrive at maturity with a sure first touch in both feet. However, Steve Bould is perhaps indulging in wishful thinking if he believes they are more likely to achieve first-team status at Arsenal than elsewhere. Although he is a biased witness, Wenger himself defends his policy: “I have tried to build an academy that will recruit young local kids. At present, we have exceptional under-14s and under-16s. Technically they are extraordinary.”
One notable departure from the usual precedent of arranging loans to other English clubs has seen the placing of two teenagers in Spain. Fran Merida, plucked by Arsenal from Barcelona’s academy in a similar manner as Cesc Fabregas, has been sent to Real Sociedad in the second division, whilst Mexican striker Carlos Vela, who at the time of writing had yet to kick a ball at any level for Arsenal, spent the 2006/07 with second-division Salamanca before going to top-flight La Liga side Osasuna. (In the case of Vela, to qualify for a UK work permit, he had to serve time in Spain.) Still to demonstrate the exceptional potential of a Fabregas, Wenger probably feels that they will learn more through being exposed to a league more conducive to their background and style of play than could be found in England and thereby have more chance to succeed than other loanees. If Merida does come out unscathed, he will be bucking the trend in a further way as he did train as one of the academy youths for a full season (rather than with the first-team squad). At least the two boys, together with their English peers, testify to Steve Bould’s claim that the meticulous attention to scouting pays dividends. “First and foremost we manage to get hold of good players,” says Bould. “It seems a simple starting point – recruiting the best – but it isn’t so easy when every other club is trying to do the same . . . whether from abroad or in and around London.”
“Do British kids have a right to play for British teams?” asks Tony Banfield. “ They have to earn the right.” He feels that the changing culture in affluent societies has handicapped their chances, reflecting that, “now, in working class London, kids can’t play on the streets and develop themselves the way I used to. On my travels, I have developed the P formula – population plus poverty produces players.” Such an equation may go some way to explaining the English exception of Wayne Rooney, who as a child played football in the roads of the working-class Croxteth area of Liverpool, where a large number of the residents were unable to find employment. Banfield confirms that, as a rule, “kids in the UK have to be nurt
ured in a structured manner, as they don’t play on the streets. But facilities don’t make players. In Africa they play in bare feet, but the quality produced now is higher than many richer countries.” Of the competition to make it as a professional, he feels no sympathy for home-grown talent, stating, “It’s an open market. So if you want to join Manchester United, you have to be better than a kid from France or Spain or Africa. And Spain is used as a stepping stone to the EU now for non-EU kids.”
To counter the greater competition for the best players, the catchment area for Arsenal targets has increased in size. Brazil was not an unfamiliar source for seasoned players
(Silvinho, Edu and Gilberto were purchased over a period of four years, whilst Barcelona’s Edmilson might have joined them were it not for work-permit problems) but now the scouting system is working hard to secure teenagers from South and Central America, such as Denilson and the Mexican Vela. There is unquestionably a greater Hispanic presence at the club now, with Fabregas, Manuel Almunia, Eduardo and Merida (José Antonio Reyes and Julio Baptista providing further evidence from the recent past). David Dein says that “Arsène believes the future lies with South American and African players,” although Wenger himself would not go as far as to publicly admit it. It can be assumed that he holds this belief due to the perceived superior technique of Spanish and South American prospects and greater physicality of African players. In the English game, there is little debate that an element of aerial dominance and raw power in defence is a prerequisite to success, although at Arsenal it has to be combined with technique. Further forward, there is more of a mix, as pace and skill assume greater importance.
Master of all he surveys – he fulfils the role of technical director as well as coach and general factotum on the playing side – Wenger has built a team of scouts under the direction of Steve Rowley and Dave Holden who transverse the globe. Based in Italy, but with a territorial responsibility that extends beyond the Alps, Tony Banfield, explains: “Scouts are headhunters looking for players who are better than those we have. At the end of each year our aim is to upgrade the playing performance of the team, physically, tactically and technically.” These men are a mirror opposite of his players. “These English scouts”, as Wenger explains, “have been formed here [at Arsenal] but have my way of seeing things”.
One of the few foreign exceptions among Wenger’s scouting network is Gilles Grimandi, whose primary remit is naturally France and the francophone overseas territories. He succinctly states, “We are able to attract the most promising prospects because we have a calling card stamped ‘Arsène Wenger’.” And Grimandi adds, “[Another] asset to attract youngsters is the fact that with us they know they will get the chance to play . . . it is one of our principal arguments.” It was certainly one that Arsène Wenger used to Monsieur and Madame Clichy when he went to see them at their home in the south of France a few days before the FA Cup Final in 2003 to persuade them to entrust him with the development of their precocious teenage son. Gaël Clichy’s club, Cannes, had been relegated to the third division and had been forced to abandon its professional status and he was now a free, though much in demand, agent. With strong competition from a number of French clubs, Damien Comolli, then a vital member of Arsène’s entourage, pushed Wenger into action. As Clichy recalls, “He [Wenger] told me that Giovanni van Bronckhorst would be loaned to Barcelona and I would be the understudy for Ashley Cole. And that’s exactly what happened . . . in France perhaps there are not enough chances for young players . . . there is nowhere better than England.”
There is a harmonious common purpose throughout the disparate parts of the scouting networks. As Wenger explains, “The scouts and myself have regular discussions on how we assess players. We also arrange an annual get together so that the scouts can see how the first team train. We then make sure that they go and see any prospect we are interested in at training so there can be a direct comparison. Great importance is attached to what can be learned by observing a potential prospect’s preparation.” As he joked regarding José Antonio Reyes, “We even watched him in training. How did I do that? With a hat and a moustache.” Perhaps the banal nickname of ‘Clousseau’ given to him on arrival by his English players was accurate after all.
This thoroughness can extend to trailing the quarry for years. Wenger adds about Reyes that he was “scouted for two years, every minute of every game.” Unlike many clubs which according to Gilles Grimandi “have a tendency to pursue many leads in case they miss someone good . . . we limit our horizon and closely follow only a few. We will start at 16 or 17 and then if necessary, follow them until they are 20 . . . and perhaps one day they will sign [for us]”. This attention to detail is confirmed by Tony Banfield’s admission that, “Only three youngsters have been signed by the club as a result of my own scouting over 11 years, but the potential returns when you get it right justify the work I do.” As an example of his own meticulous attention to detail, Grimandi reveals that “I saw Bacary Sagna on more than 30 occasions. I checked him once, then ten times, then 20 times before finally deciding he was the one we needed.” In fact, Grimandi was so painstaking that by the time Sagna arrived from Auxerre in the summer of 2007, he was an atypical signing, at the end of the accepted age scale. “It is difficult to envisage taking a player of 23”, says Grimandi. “It’s too late. It’s not worth the trouble of extending our quotas [of older players]”. Wenger though is pleased that he bent the rules in this case. At Christmas 2007, he told an acquaint ance that “he is one of those who has pleased me most”, after Sagna became the first-choice right back.
The conclusion that can be drawn from the Arsenal academy’s ten years of existence is that its function is to provide back-up players for the first-team squad, with the probability that they will eventually be sold on having failed to hold down a starting eleven spot. Liam Brady – an Arsenal man through and through – must, at times, ask himself whether much of his time has been well spent, giving the lie to David Dein’s hyperbolic claim that he [Brady] “has the most important job at the club”. Perhaps Wenger is too familiar with Brady’s role, and feels he knows better from bitter experience. “In the beginning, I started by coaching five-to seven-year-olds at a football school, then seven-to ten-year-olds at the club [Strasbourg],” he recalls. “I then took the academy and it’s there that one understands that there are young players who’ve not been given their chance. At the same time this is a point of decision for me. I have to see who will become a professional and who won’t.”
And if a player makes the grade for Wenger, “then comes the crucial period of integration into the first team. You must make a place available for a young player and it is often the most delicate of tasks, one which many clubs fail.” Sometimes, it is timing rather than ability that determines the careers of Wenger’s trainees. “At some stage I have to make a decision and if you do that it is not always just considering the individual – you consider an overall package. Who is in front of him? With who is he competing? Will he get in front of this guy? Is he at a level when he cannot wait anymore – if you don’t do it now he will completely sink and therefore sometimes there is a gamble in there. But at the end of the day the most important thing is that the guy has a good life.”
It is undoubtedly rewarding for trainees to go through their professional evolution at the academy but, so far, there seems to be little positive benefit for the future of the club itself, except on the player trading balance sheet. Even the justification that there is a lack of technique in English players seems to be countered of late by the moving on of prospects originally discovered overseas, such as Larsson and the Ghanaian-Dutch forward Quincy Owusu-Abeyie. Whether Arsenal are best served by such an approach is a moot point, but Arsène Wenger’s policy of placing his trust in players of all nationalities who he can influence at first hand looks set to continue. “I always say to my players who are foreign, ‘Don’t just believe that you have to play well, you have to do better than people from here. If y
ou go to a foreign country you have to give something more. If you do just what the local people do, they don’t need you. So there is pressure on you to give more.’”
CHAPTER FIVE
ONWARDS AND UPWARDS
Arsène Wenger’s most successful spell to date at Arsenal occurred between the 2001/02 and 2004/05 seasons, when the club landed five major trophies in four years. The pinnacle was the Premiership campaign of 2003/04 when the team accomplished the feat of going through the entire league programme without incurring a single defeat, a phenomenal feat that had only been achieved once before in England – by Preston North End in the 19th century, and they only played 22 matches compared to Arsenal’s 38.
Within the ‘Invincibles’, there were contributors from his 1997/98 team – Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp, Ray Parlour and (albeit in more of a supporting role) Martin Keown – but for the most part a new team had been constructed largely with the chequebook, although there was no profligacy on the manager’s part. In Wenger’s first nine seasons at the club, the haul of titles and FA Cups was accum ulated for a deficit of around £44 million (£136 million being the total spend). That he was able to attain such value for money was due to his knack of realising a high return on players whose reputations had been enhanced by his tutelage. Most notably, Nicolas Anelka (£23 million) and Marc Overmars (£25 million) brought in colossal sums from Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively, accounting for over half of the income received through transfer sales in that period. The profit from such deals enabled the club to establish itself as a major force in Europe without spending the huge amounts other teams did. If one definition of a great manager is someone who makes fewer mistakes in acquiring players, then coupled with his ability to develop youngsters, Wenger’s shrewdness in the transfer market places him in this rarefied category. Moreover, his sense of timing of when to release a star has usually been spot on. Although he would not have chosen to sell Anelka, to secure Thierry Henry as a replacement for less than a third of the fee received from Real Madrid, was a masterstroke (and the remainder underwrote the construction of the sumptuous new training centre at London Colney, jokingly referred to as the ‘Nicolas Anelka training ground’ by former goalkeeping coach Bob Wilson). On the other hand, there is no argument that Wenger got the best years out of Overmars – his subsequent seasons were littered with injuries, with an enforced retirement four years after leaving Highbury, as well as turning a profit of over £18 million on the sale.