17-06-2024, 08:22 AM
Read the above links about the success rate at academies. The chances of finding a player who will graduate to the first team are miniscule, and diminish proportionately when you have inferior facilities to the competition. These are not musings, these are the facts of the matter following a ten year review of the entire UK academy system.
So you have to ask, is it money well spent? Would you ever be likely to produce a player that would either a) save you money on buying in talent (whether raw or fully formed) or b) be good enough to be sold to cover the costs of the entire academy for the time the player was in the system and make a profit.
Given how things are now, and discounting ancient history, you simply would not undertake something like this in any other business.
And football is a business.
The risk/return ration is absurdly high. You simply cannot justify the outlay on the off chance that in 5-10 years time you may, in a less than 100-1 chance, have a player worth something.
So you have to ask, is it money well spent? Would you ever be likely to produce a player that would either a) save you money on buying in talent (whether raw or fully formed) or b) be good enough to be sold to cover the costs of the entire academy for the time the player was in the system and make a profit.
Given how things are now, and discounting ancient history, you simply would not undertake something like this in any other business.
And football is a business.
The risk/return ration is absurdly high. You simply cannot justify the outlay on the off chance that in 5-10 years time you may, in a less than 100-1 chance, have a player worth something.