It's Carling Cup week and that is when Arsenal's youngsters take centre stage so it's no suprise to see these comments from Arsene Wenger about the new rules regarding signing young players in which he says:
"If you cannot add any players under 18, and you have the home-grown rule, and on top of that English clubs are limited to bringing in young players who live less than 90 minutes from the training ground, how can we produce home-grown players?
"Personally, I don't know. So it's vital that this under-18 transfer rule is not implemented because English clubs would have a domestic limitation and a foreign limitation, making it harder to produce home-grown players.
"In England we accumulate disadvantages. We cannot buy [an academy player] outside our 90-minute radius.
"So already we cannot take a player from Manchester or Southampton. We cannot take a player from Asia, North or South America, Africa.
"What can we do? We can only pray that somebody next to London Colney is as gifted as Maradona and says, 'Please can I play for you'.
Love that last bit, Wenger always has a way of coming out with a catchy little quote like his comment about Mark Hughes last week.
It's a fair point he makes, and seems to put English clubs at a disadvantage compared to their European rivals.
If all these rules come into effect Englich clubs will not be able to sign players from abroad if they are under 18 or if they live more than 90 minutes away but will still have to include 8 home grown players in their squad.
So on the one hand the authorities are limiting the players clubs can sign while at the same time telling clubs they must use more home grown players. Seems like the rules are moving in two opposite directions.
I agree that young players should not be taken from the club which has developed him without any compensation being paid to them so perhaps the age at which players can be signed on a professional contract needs to be harmonised across Europe.
But then what if a young player hits 18 and wants to leave the club he has been trained at? Let's say you are Cesc Fabregas and you don't fancy your chances of breaking into the first team at Barcelona and Arsenal want you and are offering first team football. Should you be forced to sign with the team that developed you?
The other point, and one that Wenger is keen to stress, is that why shouldn't the best young players be signed by the best teams and trained by the best coaches with the best facilities at their disposal, surrounded by the best players in the world? If you were the best in any other field, you would be pushed to develop your talent so why not football?
One area of concern would be if the top clubs signed all the best young players around just to stop others having them. One simple way to stop this would be to impose a limit on the number of young players a club could sign in each age group.
And if anyone is in any doubt about the benefit of having a young player training with the top players here is what Sanchez Watt said about being at the same club as Thierry Henry, and the advice he got from the great man:
"I didn't get to play with him but I still asked him questions off the pitch when he was free about how it was and things like that.
"He said ‘be calm in front of goal and when the ball is moving, you don't have to keep making long runs. Make it short and sharp and just take it from there'.
"I was about 14. But it's about my career and not many people get the chance to talk to players like him, so I just took it as a good opportunity.
"I wasn't nervous because when we were growing up, our manager told us you can ask the senior players questions."
Nice to see that the younger players are encouraged by the manager to make the most of the top players around them. This issue is one that is going to keep cropping up.
Tomorrow i'll look forward to Saturday's game against Fulham.
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