Squad Numbers

As a kid it is the dream to be scouted by a football club, you’re playing in the garden, dribbling past imaginary defenders and suddenly a strange man in a smart suit and sunglasses walks up to you and offers you a trial at one of the biggest clubs in the world. An hour later you’ve scored a hat-trick in your first team debut, been called up for your country and are widely regarded as one of the greatest young players on the planet.

The reality though, is much different. The reality is that the strange man in a suit comes and offers you a trial, you get rejected before getting carted around academies all over the country, until eventually, after you have settled at a club just as you reach first team age, you are sold to another club who do not want you as part of the PSR (Profit and Sustainability rules) merry-go round. You are not a hotshot wonderkid, you are “Pure Profit”.

This path is followed by many footballers at the moment and it begs to question what the point of having an academy really is.

1. Being part of the First Team

This is perhaps the most “moral” of way a football clubs academy can operate. Clubs put years into developing their young talent, so it’s only right that they then progress into being part of the first team and assisting the club by contributing on the pitch, because on the pitch success is the best kind of success after all.

There are many examples of players coming through at clubs and being major parts of their teams. Phil Foden stayed at Man City despite some challenging years and has become a major part of their success over the last decade, Reece James won the Champions League with Chelsea and later captained to Club World Cup glory. Bukayo Saka has become Arsenal’s most important player since he broke into the team. Arsenal themselves are a pretty good example, with Saka, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ehtan Nwaneri and Max Dowman all contributing to the first team in recent weeks.

There are plenty of examples of youth prospects becoming key figures for their clubs. This can be crucial for clubs, as producing a world class young talent through your academy is a much cheaper alternative to splashing the cash on a potential dud “wonderkid”.

2. Acquire, develop, “Pure Profit” repeat, the PSR merry-go round

The other potential use of a Football academy is to make financial gain. Clubs such as Chelsea will stockpile young players, loan them out so that their value increases, and then sell them, potentially with the player never playing a game for them. From a business point of view, it works, you don’t pay anything to get them in, and you sell them for millions, it is “pure profit”. However, from a human side, it probably isn’t as rewarding, you think you’re getting support from your club in your career, until you’re shipped all over the place and sold before you even get a chance. The ultimate example of this is Chelsea, whose stockpiling in the past has gone incredibly far, to prove this, here is a team of players who were a part of Chelsea’s academy and where they are now:

Lucas Bergstrom (Mallorca), Marc Guehi (Crystal Palace), Nathan Ake (Crystal Palace), Lewis Hall (Newcastle), Ola Aina (Nottingham Forest), Declan Rice (Arsenal), Connor Gallagher (Atletico Madrid), Mason Mount (Manchester United), Callum Hudson-Odoi (Nottingham Forest), Michael Olise (Bayern Munich), Dominic Solanke (Tottenham Hotspur).

Now there are a couple of players on this list who weren’t actually sold by Chelsea, and were instead released before they had a chance to reach that stage, but I actually think that those examples prove the point, clubs are so focused on churning out so many of their money making dogs, that they actually miss a few gems. This is a very, very good team, a team that could challenge many in the Premier League, and they were all let go by Chelsea.

The other aspect of this is the PSR exchanges of players that we have seen in recent years. Clubs will essentially agree to overpay for each other’s young players, in order to balance each other’s PSR books, leaving both players in a situation they don’t want to be in. A prime example is the dealings between Everton and Aston Villa in the summer of 2024, where Tim Iroegbunam left Aston Villa to join Everton, and Lewis Dobbin went the other way. Both players were on the peripheries of their respective clubs sides before their moves, and remained so after. In fact, Dobbin hasn’t made a single for Aston Villa thus far, and has been on three separate loans.

These transfers aren’t for sporting benefit, they don’t have the players’ best interests at heart, they are there to satisfy a set of rules which themselves don’t do what they say on the tin. The Premier Leagues’s PSR state that clubs can’t lose more than £105 million over a three year cycle, now this doesn’t stop clubs from losing money, clubs can still go out of business under these rules, you could lose £100 million over 3 years for 30 years, meaning that in that period you would in total lose £1 billion, and you would still be classed as “sustainable”.

These rules are inherently flawed, they don’t achieve their intention, and instead promote pointless inter-club transfer which don’t help anyone.

3. There’s no point at all (Brentford)

Some clubs have looked at all of this and thought that it might be best to stay out of it all. After all, having an academy, comes with many extra costs. The club will still have to pay costs throughout the players development, such as travel to and from academy games, owning the academy facility itself, paying for its upkeep and the players wages whilst they are still at the club.

The best example of this is Brentford, who shut their academy down in 2016, before re-opening in 2022. At the time of the closure, Brentford felt that the extra costs were too much and focused more on their “Moneyball” transfer strategy.

It is true that if you don’t produce any first team ready players, it can’t be a worthwhile investment, and especially for smaller clubs, who tend to have their best players poached by the bigger clubs before they even make it to the first team. You pump resources into this academy which gives you nothing back, it can’t be worth it.

Conclusion: If you want to have a football career, sign for Chelsea

Overall, it’s difficult to say what the purpose of a Football academy player is, but what is clear is that while you might be thrown all over the continent on loan, and never make an appearance for them, sign for Chelsea, they know how to increase the value of a football player.