http://footballcentral.com.au/australia ... PTfvPmUevgYouth development is to sport what sowing is to agriculture. In a perfect environment with the right conditions you can take a seed of talent and grow it into a fully-bloomed professional footballer, but without these optimum conditions you’re leaving it up to the randomness of chance. The odd gem can spring up against the odds but consistent results are needed to sustain the growth of a footballing nation
Great read. I love this point.
I do think though that HAL clubs are beginning to address this issue. Obviously with almost every HAL club starting out brand new, development pathways and academies need to be set up as well and considering most clubs aren't rolling in cash these things obviously had to be put on the back burner while the clubs themselves were being established.La Masia has an annual budget of 20 million Euros which includes a Barca B team and an U19 team with scouts all over Spain and the world looking for the next Messi. This is just not realistic for Australian clubs to emulate and they don’t need to do so, with other smaller clubs around the world getting as impressive results with a fraction of the budget and smaller networks
I guess a couple of clubs really don't have much of an excuse. Perth had almost 10 years on everyone else so the fact they are around the same level in the youth set up is disappointing and considering the money Victory and Sydney have thrown around on players over the years it would have been nice to see more of that put back into creating their own players.
