http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/soccer/the-kid-that-had-it-all-278965.html

Well worth a read and gives a very informed outlook about how parts of football work. Divided into 2 posts as it so long.

As the world gets smaller, the chase to find football’s next big thing has become a cut-throat, global exercise for the game’s richest clubs.

After nearly two decades as Arsenal’s Academy director, Liam Brady has seen enough changes to know it’s time someone else was trying to chase down those spotty teenagers and their agents.

ven after 18 years, often literally mapping Arsenal’s future, there are still puzzles that even Liam Brady — or that left foot of his you could open a tin of beans with — can’t unlock.

Offered ability or attitude, do you sign a 12-year-old Mario Balotelli or a same-aged Roy Keane?

“You’d want both of them to come through,” the ex-Arsenal Academy director deadpans.

“You always want the one who has the unbelievable ability, because he can make it to the very top if he gets his head right, and the penny drops what he can achieve. But with some of them, the penny never drops.

“A kid that has the determination but not necessarily the skill? You’ll get him a good career, they’re the ones in the majority, the ones who do get careers in the game. The players who have all the skill, but lack the mentality — they’re the ones who don’t always make it to the very highest level.”

Balotelli v Keane? “Keane would have more or a chance, for sure. But people put up with Balotelli, don’t they, because he can do unbelievable things. You won’t give up on him, would you? I’ve spoken to Arsene about the most gifted players and I say ‘he’s good Arsene, but he’s a bit troublesome’. And he says, ‘Liam, all the best players are troublesome’.”

In his 18 years as Arsenal’s head of youth development, and the memorable nine years as a player at Highbury, 58-year-old Liam Brady experienced personal and collective highs beyond ordinary comprehension. Telling a 14-year-old lad, eyes moist with tears, legs weak, stomach sick, that he has no future at Arsenal was not one of them.

“It’s very difficult,” he says. “You’re there, and you know he, and his parents, are begging for the words not to come out of your mouth. You’ve got to almost steel yourself for a couple of days and know that it’s in the offing. Be strong and decisive, but also kind, compassionate and understanding and give the kid and his parents something to move on with.

“I had to make decisions at under 12, 14, 16 and 18 whether a player was going to be offered further registration or contracts, and that’s something I won’t miss.

“I’ve let kids go at 14 who are making a very good living in the game. In recent times, I think I could have got Raheem Sterling if I’d really gone for him, but I didn’t go through with that one. Players we don’t keep often go on and have a good career in the game. It isn’t an end. Ok, he’s leaving Arsenal, but clubs are always ringing us saying ‘well, tell us about this fella, and give me a list of the lads who are leaving’. That isn’t said to soften the blow for the lad, that’s the truth. Within weeks, these lads have moved to another academy.

“I saw a kid recently — Lewis Grabbon — Norwich have paid around £3m (€3.76) to Bournemouth for him, I let that kid go when he was 14. Dwight Gayle, who is playing for Crystal Palace, we let him go too, he cost Palace a couple of million. Invariably when you leave Arsenal, at the very very minimum, other clubs will want to take a look at you on trial. You don’t just leave Arsenal and go back to amateur football.”

Brady, as anyone who knows him will attest, is not a man for fools. He was clear-minded enough in the final moments of the 1979 FA Cup final to catch Manchester United cold while most of his colleagues stood paralysed at conceding two late goals in three mad minutes. And while he will retain a contract with Arsenal as an ambassador, he is not especially misty-eyed at leaving his Academy role.

“It was no wrench in any shape or form,” he says with that tv studio blunt-edge. “You’ve had an innings and you know it’s over, and I told the club in good time that I wasn’t going to stay on. It’s a new chapter for Arsenal, I want them to get even more young talent coming through. That’s the philosophy that gave me my playing career. I got a chance at 17, I got a good grounding at Arsenal Football Club. It doesn’t get enough credit for that really.

“Leaving a role of responsibility I’ve had for the last 18 years, yes that’s going to be strange. I usually wake up every morning with problems to deal with, decisions to make. But that’s the reason I am getting out of it.”

He took on the role, in a happy coincidence, the year Arsene Wenger took over as manager. But the job now is nothing like the job then.

“Player and parent power has come to the fore over the last four or five years. Because of the competition at the very top of English football and the money that’s involved — the money gets into the youth development area as well — there is huge competition. Whereas in 1996 and for ten years, it was all about persuading the parents and the boy that the club was right for him.

“But now you can have a boy at your club from the age of eight, and then he can say ‘I’ve got a better offer from somewhere else’, so that creates a whole new set of issues to deal with. You’ve got agents who are giving the parents another side of the story — the financial bottom line — so that’s made it much more difficult.

“Also, the system in England has become a lot more bureaucratic — they’ve created this categorisation of clubs and academies. Arsenal has got to be in Category 1 because, well, we’re Arsenal. To be a Category 1 club, you’ve got to have huge numbers of staff, huge amounts of previewing, reviewing, assessing — and it’s got to be all logged. Boxes to be ticked. That’s not the job I came into.”

So the sepia-tinted ideal of a manager driving back through the black of night from a wet and windy Rotherham after snapping up the next big thing in five minutes in the manager’s back office?

“No decision is made in five minutes anymore. There’s negotiations with the agent, then the agent comes back and more talks ensue. I have always used Arsene when it came to the crunch over whether we wanted to get a particular player from outside, or one of our players who was having his head turned. In that, he’d be a tremendous help.

“The next big thing? That’s media talk, isn’t it. Wilshere was signposted by the people that count, not media people.”

I mention some of the next great things that never were: Luke Freeman. Jermaine Pennant. Emmanuel Frimpong. Ones that appeared destined for a life less ordinary.

“Jermaine [Pennant] did very well to get as far as he has from the background he came from, he did bloody well. But Wilshere, you heard from the people who knew that we had something special. Luke Freeman? Gillingham needed a bit of money, Arsenal came in and said we’ll have a bit of a gamble on this lad and the press went ‘Arsenal sign young superstar from Gillingham’.

“Other lads are too headstrong. They can’t be told. Social media, unacceptable behaviour — these are all problems of modern society. Arsene won’t put up with that and I tell the young lads if their behaviour is, in any way, erratic or unreliable, either they change their ways or change their club. Unfortunately, there’s a lot don’t have the intelligence to hear what people are telling them.