Source: Man_City
Special report: Inside City's dream factory
| Submit Comments| Comments (70)| Printable Version1/1Play SlideshowClose Map"Manchester City ? killing football since 2008? read the rib-tickling City banner in the away end at Tottenham on the opening day of the season. It was the Blues fans? ironic response to some of the nonsense that has been spouted about the club since their takeover by Sheikh Mansour. The huge injection of money, had, we were told by some of the supposed great and good of the game, distorted the transfer market, created a wage explosion and crushed their own, famed academy in one fell swoop. The dubious validity of the first two accusations have been debated at length, but the notion that the Blues have somehow stifled their own proud record of producing academy players simply does not stack up. Indeed, a brisk walk around the academy premises at Platt Lane speaks of a set-up which is not just thriving as of old, but bursting with innovation and progress, and which has benefited from £10m of investment over the past two years. With Uefa?s financial fair play rules appearing as a small storm cloud on the horizon of all of Europe?s biggest clubs, the academy becomes more central to City?s future than it has ever been. City?s strategy for meeting the stringent new rules is to build a new team for the short term with the kind of outlay which has brought superstars like Carlos Tevez, David Silva and Yaya Toure to the club. But by the time the regulations are in full swing in 2019, and the club has to meet its outgoings from its revenue, they hope the academy will still be churning out top players. City envisage the academy being the biggest and best in the world by then, but Platt Lane?s head of education Peter Lowe says their basic task has not changed. ?People talk about the £300m or whatever it is that the current owners have spent on the business, but buying players is not a new thing in football,? he said. Blooded ?It may have gone beyond what we have seen in the past, due to the price of players these days and the number we have brought in, but this club has also produced 34 players who have made the first team in the 12 years since the inception of our academy. ?There are 10 internationals in that and over 60 who are now playing in other forms of professional football. That is a pretty impressive record in anybody?s books and we will continue to produce players here because that is the expectancy of the owners. ?We know that our part of the bargain is to produce a sustainable structure, a sustainable business, in which we can continue to produce players.? Mancini has bought into the strategic nature of what City are trying to do ? he blooded several youngsters last season, and has continued to hand out chances. ?We have had several players in the first team this season, and Alex Nimely-Tchuimeni , Greg Cunningham and Abdi Ibrahim all played in the first team last season, while Dedryck Boyata is continuing to make a career for himself in the first team,? says Lowe. It?s not a bad return. This is the inside of a business where people are suggesting it wouldn?t continue ? well it has continued, and we expect it to continue. ?We don?t produce players to play in the next game ? we produce players for a career. Our product is longevity, not a five-minute job. ?The expectations of the company have not changed in that regard. The heat hasn?t been turned up at all ? the pressure of the first-team manager is to get results, and our pressure is to produce players. ?That is no different to what it was ten years ago. When people see a player come through to the first team and do well, people then expect to see others do the same.? The sight of players Guidetti, Nimely and Cunningham seeing some daylight in terms of the first team is pure gold for the staff at the academy. As well as vindicating their work, it also offers inspiration to the scores of young players who roll up at the facility, in the heart of south Manchester. One of them is Harry Bunn, a promising 18-year-old striker who has been at the academy for nine years, and is the son of Oldham Athletic legend Frankie. And he says that the influx of masses of superstar players which came with the takeover has, far from daunting the youngsters, served to inspire them. ?The club?s history of bringing players through had a massive influence in me coming here,? he said. ?It shows that players here will get a chance in the first team as long as you are good enough. ?The takeover has been a great thing. Every day you come in here and want to work hard to prove yourself, and when you see the big names ahead of you, it just spurs you on to do well.? But City are intent on not becoming a meat market for professional footballers, and have introduced an intriguing scheme aimed at making sure they produce well-rounded human beings able to cope with the pressures of fame and fortune, or deal with the consequences of failing to make the grade. Football has badly neglected that human side of player development in recent years, leading to car-crash footballers like Paul Gascoigne or Joey Barton. And tales of high-profile spending have helped to alienate Premier League footballers from their public, leading to a vision ? often exaggerated ? of a cosseted breed who live in bubbles, far removed from the everyday world. There is one story of a former Premier League manager who had previously been a top professional player, and had to ask advice on how you go about buying a television. He had everything laid on a plate for him since the age of 16, and simply did not understand the basics of everyday life. Disastrous City not only want to equip their young players with such ordinary life skills, but also to let them see the other side of life. For that reason, every week players are involved in City?s community work, helping to coach not only kids from the club?s junior academy, but also underprivileged and disabled youngsters. ?If you cast your mind back to the disastrous results in the World Cup, a lot came out in the press,? said Lowe. ?I remember one article that talked about the demise of a player?s development, not in a technical sense, but as a whole person. ?The term ?holistic? has been over-used, but we believe that if we provide an education for players in what the business of being a professional footballer is all about, we think his ability to become a better player ? in terms of being a human being within the game ? will increase. ?We have boys who leave the club every week to attend functions with City in the Community, and boys who are part and parcel of the junior academy coaching scheme. ?It also helps our boys to develop skills of an inter-personal nature, and reacting with other people, but they are also learning the other side of the job, which is being a coach. ?And it also looks at dealing with financial issues in a player?s life as he develops and gets more success in the game, and the ability to earn money becomes a reality. ?It?s a wide-ranging programme, and we feel we have gone a little step further in the development of a young player. ?We also need to teach them to be independent. Players are human beings at the end of the day, and inhabit the same society as the rest of us. ?They have the same pressures in that society as the rest of us, although theirs might be exacerbated somewhat. But they are human, open to the rigours and pressures of everyday life, so it?s about skill development.? CITY is now bringing the expertise of the Blues academy to young footballers worldwide via the internet. The online resource aims at teaching kids basic football skills and giving them a glimpse of life at Platt Lane. Visit www.cityecademy.com and watch the video below for a taster from the site ...
