That would be brilliant! We buy it and then give it on loan to WFC. Martin Samuels will be happy! :sign13:
Let's move on, if the England team and football in this country lead by the premiership want to **** themselves up the arse, leave them to it
If I had a child that was a talented footballer, I can honestly say that I would probably not send him to a big Premiership teams academy. IMHO at a big club the child would become a very small fish in a very big pond, and would probably have far less chance of becoming a professional footballer. Whereas at a smaller club the child would have a better chance of progressing to the professional ranks, and probably much more chance of reaching the first team squad. Therefore the chance of my child eventually playing for one of the so called big clubs first team would be far greater by not going through the big teams academy; but by establishing themselves as a big fish in a small pond and making the big club wanting to buy them.
Would you compromise your child's future for a short term gain? Whereas by making the right decision could mean that hopefully in the long term your child could buy you and themselves a mansion instead of being a wasted talent and broke.
We should pack him off to Udinese then if Utd still want him they can pay what he is worth, instead of basically stealing him under the current rip off regulations.
This is why there's no point in Watford having a top rated academy anymore, as any very good talent will just be cherry picked by the big clubs and Watford get very little recompense. Everyone knows it's wrong, even the big clubs know it's immoral, but that's the way it is......everyone is out for themselves. It's important for Watford to find another way, which they have. Smaller clubs have to be very clever and inventive to compete. Once Obi's had his head turned at United, there's very little change we'll ever see him in a Watford shirt again, so this is why I applaud the Pozzo's for creating a different formula to achieve success and make money from nurturing young talent. They cannot do it in England because as the Obi situation tells you, there's a massive risk of losing your best talent for virtually nothing. Until Watford are established in the Premiership, and have that little bit of power where they can keep their best young prospects, there's very little point in having a top rated academy.
Glad to see we agree, C + P from an earlier thread: - That's right, but the whole idea becoming 3rd tier and sending our best talent over to Udinese is to stop The Premiership snapping up our best youngsters for a song, which they can under the new Premiership biased youth regulations. I fully expect that most of the talented young players that we farm out to Udinese will return to WFC once they are no longer vulnerable to the clutches of the Premierships cheap buy out clauses.
We can't make the kid do anything, he's not our player anymore. If he goes to United then good luck to him. After doing a bit of research though United take in hundreds of teenagers on trial every year and obviously only a small percentage get signed up. If he decides to accept our offer then hopefully we'll have a real player on our hands at the end of his scholarship.
It is akin to one big cattle market for United. Young players have their heads filled with dreams of being superstars and parade themselves before their potential new masters. Agents encourage their young clients to attend in the hope of making some nice commission and allowing them to boast in their local that they are negotiating with Man Utd etc. The Uniteds of this world will continue to act as vultures and take on a number of teenage players and cruelly discard them in a few years when they are not up to their standards, whilst at the same time pay tens of millions for established superstars each year (mostly, ironically, coming up through the ranks with smaller clubs). Meanwhile, the football authorities provide a foundation for such activity by insisting on the category based academy system. It is all ugly, very ugly.
Nobody can guarantee that they would make it at Watford either. If I had a child that was a talented footballer, I would do extensive research into the probability his making it at Watford or whichever big club was in for him, calculate the value of the difference in terms of their likely career earnings and weigh this against the inducements on offer. But if I was a mathematical genius able to assess probability properly, I'd probably have passed on at least some of those genes to the aspiring footballer, and then I'd advise him to try to become a merchant banker or a professional Bet365 player or something. As I'm too thick for that, I'd take a punt and advise him to join Watford.
There two sides to the 'join a top club' coin and that's that you'll inevitably be loaned out to a club of football league standard anyways but still be making the silly money at United etc.
How many of those do not make it a the big team but due to having such a good grounding, they make it elsewhere in the leagues? Pique (to an extent), Kieran Richardson, Frazier Campbell, Jon Spector, Cory Evans, Robbie Brady, all top flight players who never made it in the first team there. Our own Cathcart and Woods also graduated from there recently. Going back the likes of Healy, Savage and Gillespie went onto have successful international careers afterwards. Unfortunately for us, with the top quality training and conditioning you get there as a youth, you are more likely to make it even elsewhere.
Have I missed something? Having a top rated academy would mean top clubs COULDN'T take our players wouldn't it? Furthermore, it's not that straightforward as telling a 16 year old to go and move 1,000 miles to a foreign country.
Nope, Category 1 can still take from Category 1 with little compensation. Arsenal took the very highly rated Daniel Crowley from Villas academy (one of the best in country, category 1) for 125k.
That's why we should turn Harefield over to Udinese and set up a Watford Academy in Friuli. A consortium if you like. No one need move further afield than they want to but we get to protect our assets. Someone seriously needs to put this to Gino - he loves to bend a rule so I expect would be game!
I suppose the problem with an 'Udinese' academy here is that; A) Are they in a position to be running a second academy? Ultimately they would have to finance it. B) Everybody will click at what's going on and (will most likely) refuse to play against the team; the players won't be able to play against other academy's in the country thus losing out on development ultimately. C) Is it a less attractive option? Who's to say youngsters will buy into the idea of never having the chance of being pinched by Manchester United, Arsenal etc. The EPP is shocking, FIFA have so many rules in place to prevent big clubs pinching young players from abroad but nothing is being done to prevent such a disgusting system here. EDIT: or the other option is to put all our top youngsters under contract to Udinese and to have them on 'trial' here. No doubt there's something preventing that though.
The idea of having the Watford academy based in Italy/Harefield owned by Udinese is quite interesting, but an obvious downside is that none of the players produced from it would count has homegrown until the age of 20 at the earliest (professional terms at 17, 3 years from that date = 20 years old). Not necessarily the worst thing in the world but worth considering since we're currently using academy graduates to bolster our HG numbers. Other logistical problems for a foreign soil academy include language barriers and parents possibly being opposed to their kid moving abroad (since the parents would need to move too). I do think there is actually some merit in this suggestion, though. EPPP is a f***ing joke and it would be nice to stick two fingers up at it.
Not at all. It would mean would get slightly more compensation that's all, but we would not be protected from clubs taking our players. Under the rules, a talented 16-year-old registered with a Category 1 Academy since Under-9 level could sign for another club and his current team would be due £200,000 in compensation. For the same player, a Category 3 club would receive only £71,500. If we were Category 1 we would have to pay £2.3m for the privilege. Category 3 clubs only have to pay £500k. As a Championship club, there is no benefit in having a Category 1 Academy as it only benefits the top clubs. If Watford developed a top talent it would only serve the big teams as they would just come a cherry-pick who they like. The current system just does not work if you are not in the Premier League. In fact it only really works if you are a big club and can retain your developing young players. Who wants to spend £2.3m per season to develop players for Man Utd, or Man City and to get only £200k in return? It's certainly not in Watford's interest to do this.
hornetboy, you've missed out the potential £1.3M if the player plays 100 games in the Premier League for his new team and the 20% of any sell on fee if he leaves before turning 24 and 5% of all future domentic fees. That still doesn't make it worth spending the money trying to be a Category 1 academy when we can do the same job for cheaper at Harefield.
When you look at the numbers, it becomes more obvious why the Pozzos didn't see the point in pushing for Cat 1 status. We'd spend 1.8 million extra per season, and we'd get 130k more for each player poached. We haven't yet had a player poached under EPPP. Assuming Obi goes, if we had achieved Cat 1 status that would mean that we'd have paid 3.6 million extra over two seasons, and generated only an additional 130k from that Cat 1 investment. This would equate to a total loss of around 3.4 million over two years when compared to our current setup. It's a crude comparison, but it's not exactly a compelling financial argument!
I'm surprised anyone is bothering with any youth development at all. It's so obvious that it's rigged for the big boys to just cherry pick anyone's assets. Cannot believe this was sanctioned. Just let big clubs do all the youth training and pick up all the crumbs.
I wonder what Martin Samuel would have to say about this!! He was very quick to jump on us from a great height when he got an inkling of us flouting the laws regarding loan players and went on to say how it would ruin the British game - this has much more serious consequences for our already damaged product.
Samuel is hilarious. When we were doing badly, he penned an article after the 1-5 loss to Derby which started "The sales pitch was Alexis Sanchez. The reality was Steve Leo Belleck"
I don't see how us farming good players at Udinese is necessarily bad for the English game. So what if a few of our youngsters learn some good football in Italy instead of England. They're far better than us internationally and would give the national team some variety. More English players need to play abroad if the national team is going anywhere.
If anyone has already said it then I apologise but , one for the 1881... "Ogi,Obi Og...Out, Out,Out "
He's already done one of sorts: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...market-like-cattle-market--Martin-Samuel.html (also mentions Watford for added lulz)
