Tim wrote:
The thing with La Masia is that it's basically a boarding school where the majority of every waking hour is dedicated to football. So Barcelona get these kids for thousands of hours during key development ages. In England our system is nothing like that. Clubs will get a player for an hour or two a day, usually straight after school, when they're most tired.
But the recent rule changes mean that these sorts of boarding school operations will start to crop up in this country too. Will be interesting to see how it works.
That's the be all and end all of the problem, in my opinion.
As you mention, the system has been restructured recently. The 60-minute rule no longer exists; top clubs can scout and sign players from anywhere in the country from the age of 9 onward, and the compensation awarded to lower League clubs has been set at a fixed rate - the maximum is about 200K.
I think the amount of time kids are allowed to spend on the training ground has been increased, but I never read anywhere by how much. I know Watford are the first club to register their academy as a boarding school, and that gets around the time restriction - so maybe that's an option for us to explore?
Either way, the new rules are terribly elitist, but the fact is it will benefit us greatly, and give our already thriving academy the platform to move up to a whole new level.
