By Decentric - 8 Apr 2017 4:58 PM
Establishing a permanent training base in Europe is the solution to Australia's "broken" player development system, a former youth coach and Premier League scout believes.
By Dave Lewis
7 APR 2017 - 2:03 PM UPDATED YESTERDAY 2:03 PM
UK-based David Magrone, who scouted players for Tottenham Hotspur and Queens Park Rangers, discovered and nurtured a young Massimo Luongo in Sydney and helped the Socceroos midfielder land his first professional contract with Spurs.
He is convinced there is an untapped well of Luongos just waiting to be identified should FFA take a leap of faith and "throw some coin" at an increasingly vexing issue.
Once a hotbed of talent production which produced U-17, U-20 and U-23 teams who gave as good as they got in major tournaments, Australia have dropped off a cliff in recent years.
Magrone feels the answer could be a full time training base in Europe for players aged 16 to 19.
"Something has to change because the system is broken... the best way forward would be to have a central base for youth development in Europe, where players are housed and coached on a full time basis," said Magrone, who spent a total of five seasons scouring Europe for talent with Spurs and then QPR.
"This could be a talent factory for our young international teams. The players of the future don't need to belong to a club or play in a league.
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"It should be backed by the FFA and based somewhere like southern Portugal where within a few hours’ drive you have 20-plus top professional clubs you could play against in England and mainland Europe.
"We'd be on the doorstep of high level competition, and you'd be mimicking a professional environment.
"I've worked on this model; Australia needs a central development base for a group of 25-30 top quality players. You’d have to invest in that group.”
Australia’s litany of failure at youth level of late makes for grim reading.
The Olyroos have failed to reach an Olympics since 2008, the Joeys were recently bundled out early in the AFC U-16 Championships and last October the Young Socceroos' hopes of qualifying for next year's U-20 World Cup were crushed.
The prevailing mood of pessimism has been further stoked by FFA's seeming desire to close the Centre of Excellence in Canberra, and put the onus on the clubs instead.
“Right now in Australia, we're simply not going to produce top bracket players,” added Magrone.
“The best you'll get is those good enough for the A-League, and only by default - and that's not a great level."
Magrone insists he could aid in conceiving an ambitious Euro project through connections across the continent, fostered while at Spurs and QPR.
"You could have a year-round schedule,” he added. “Australia has moved away from that. The AIS used to play games in South America a lot and also Europe.
“But that was pretty much scrapped when our qualifying path took us through Asia.
“Our young players need to be playing against high calibre opponents... different teams with different systems and different cultures."
Luongo, who benefited from joining Spurs at 16, concurs that Europe might be the best place for the next generation to learn their craft.
"David has been talking about this for years, I think it's a great model and there is no one better than him to find and then produce top level players,” said the Australia midfielder.
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Magrone, whose coaching credits include St George, Apia Leichhardt and Sydney Olympic, has no doubt he could play a part in polishing a new batch of uncut diamonds.
"If I can produce one of Australia's best players (Luongo) on a hockey field with no funding, then give me the resources and I'll produce 50 more of them,” he declared.
“If the FFA are not interested, I might do it myself. It's not necessarily about winning international youth tournaments... that's not the pinnacle.
“It's having the Socceroos squad full of players like Mass, Aaron Mooy, Tom Rogic and Mile Jedinak playing at the top level, which they aren't.
"Back in the day we had 10 players in the EPL and the rest were playing in Serie A and even La Liga.
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By Decentric - 13 May 2017 10:02 AM
+x+x+x+xArthur, I wouldn't care if Portugal, Argie or anywhere else as long as its viable and suitable for our future needs. Something out of the square needs to be done, its obvious changing the curriculum and change this or that is not showing any highlights to date..... Our players are improving through the curriculum, which is similar to European powerhouses, but our Asian rivals are improving more quickly. Constant matches against quality European option will soon show up our weaknesses. A distant football mate of mine who is a top FFA staff coach took a SAP team to Korea for a tournament. He was absolutely blown out with how good Sporting Lisbon youth teams were at that tournament. They just blew everybody else away in Asia for technical quality. If we play Sporting Lisbon on a regular basis, plus Benfica, Porto, Seville, et al, we'll soon learn where we have to improve. Plus we can visit these powerhouse clubs' academies to learn better coaching practices. Another distant mate of mine is a product of Sporting Lisbon youth academy. We had no idea until he once juggled a ball and made it talk! He is the most skilful player I've seen in the flesh up close. He said he played youth football in Portugal, but failed to mention who he played for and how good he is! Im a bit late to the convo but would it be better off with the FFA sending its national youth teams over there instead? Apparently Eric Abrams wanted to created some extra youth teams such u18 and u15 along with the current teams and get these teams playing against high quality opposition all around the world year round, but it seems like the FFA have put it in the back burner though... I know that the USA have been doing that in the last few years, and at the start they didn't get great results but over time they learned their lessons with its Development Academy initative and eventually they recently have started to get some fantastic results beating some big nations such as Brazil, France etc. So would it better off doing this instead as playing other national teams would be a fair indicator rather having a COE with the same players for a certain period? At least it gives many opportunities to play against top class opposition. Eg. Here is my idea
5-8 games in Asia( mostly AFC qualies, AFF Cup and other friendly games against Japan) THIS ALREADY HAPPENS 5-10 games in Europe against nations and club sides3-5 games against South American opponents, different style of football maybe do a tour for a week also great experience in the heartbeat of football!Throw in a few training sessions and game In total around 10 to 20 games per year, a lot of this depends on FFA budget constraints but they would be better off spending that 1.6 Million on that than a COE in Europe where there you can only have a few players, here many players get exposed to top class opposition. The problem is not our talent, its our teams where they never get exposed to different teams and styles, thoughts? Decentric? LFC? Talking having competitive games on the local front. For eg PL pre season trial games, have games ever been staged against our top youth squads vsing Sydney United, Olympics, Souths youth sqauds etcetc ?.... Had this been done in the past or not to be considered ?
Two posters on 442 have kids in HAL youth programs. One said his son played 40 competitive games a season playing for Melb City. I'm not sure who they were against?
Melb City Youth lost to a Tasmanian senior team, but played them off the park with eye catching, slick football a few months ago. Tasmania could hardly get the ball.
I'd like to think in an expanded HAL, that these MC youth players on the pitch were capable of senior HAL football, as they had decent technical qualities. Whether their physical capacity is sufficient for HAL senior football, I'm not sure?
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