# Magic formula for youth development?



## younothat (Aug 5, 2017)

Even Bayern Munich doesn't have a magic formula for youth development
https://www.socceramerica.com/article/74379/even-bayern-munich-doesnt-have-a-magic-formula-fo.html

"It seems like only yesterday that Bayern Munich was hailed for its ability to produce stars from its youth ranks. In fact, it’s been seven years since a Bayern academy player broke into the first team and remained in it.

*David Alaba* made the first-team jump during the 2011-12 season after joining Bayern’s youth program in 2008. Alaba was already 16 when he left his native Austria for Säbener Strasse. He is the most recent Bayern academy success story.

Before Alaba’s breakthough, Bayern could boast a remarkable run of producing talent. 2014 World Cup winners *Bastian Schweinsteiger*, *Philipp Lahm*, *Thomas Mueller*, *Toni Kroos* and *Matts Hummels* came out of the Bayern academy.

Kroos joined Bayern at age 16 and Schweinsteiger at 14.

The youth drought in Bavaria is similar to what’s happened at Barcelona, which famously fielded 11 academy grads in a 2012 win over Levante, but has since seen the pipeline from La Masia dry up."


----------



## JJP (Aug 5, 2017)

The problem the big clubs have is that they are such big businesses they need to win, and they need players who can help them win right now, and those players have to be world class from the moment they put on the first team jersey.

It's very rare to be able to jump straight from academy into the starting lineup of Bayern Munich or Barcelona, it takes a special player.

La Maisia did produce one fairly recent graduate who could play for Barcelona, Thiago Alcantra, who is exactly the type of midfield maestro they need right now.  But Bayern Munich was able to snatch him for cheap because Barcelona could not play him enough, and Thiago had minimum play time requirements in his contract.

Manchester United academy produced Paul Pogba but they couldn't give him first team minutes, so he went to Juventus and then United had to buy him back for a ridiculous fee.

The top teams basically have a huge log jam of talent on the first team blocking their academy players from taking the final stage of development, getting significant first team minutes.


----------



## JJP (Aug 6, 2017)

younothat said:


> Before Alaba’s breakthough, Bayern could boast a remarkable run of producing talent. 2014 World Cup winners *Bastian Schweinsteiger*, *Philipp Lahm*, *Thomas Mueller*, *Toni Kroos* and *Matts Hummels* came out of the Bayern academy.
> 
> Kroos joined Bayern at age 16 and Schweinsteiger at 14.
> 
> The youth drought in Bavaria is similar to what’s happened at Barcelona, which famously fielded 11 academy grads in a 2012 win over Levante, but has since seen the pipeline from La Masia dry up."


You can't really compare the Schweinstiger/Lahm/Mueller/Kroos/Hummels generation to succeeding generations.  The Schweinstiger generation were the first fruits of the rebuilt German academy system under Klinsman.  They were pushing out a generation of players who had proven they were not in the class of the top European and South American talent, and who grew up under a different and inferior training system.

Any new Bayern academy players now have to push out the previous generation of academy players, who were trained under the revamped Klinsman system, plus the top foreign players that Bayern could buy such as Ribery, Robben and Alcantra.


----------

