Loza

[norfolkngood 1,086]

nutty I know its so so hard to churn players out but I feel at Norwich

its strange how we have many players who play international level for age under 16, 17 etc so they are in the best 20 players at their age group but do not progress further let alone first team

its been like that for years

[nutty nigel 7,530]

It''s been like that for years but not just at Norwich. It''s amazing how few schoolboy footballers play at a good level. Take a look at the England squad of U16s from the 2001 UEFA European Under-16 Football Championship tournament in England.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_UEFA_European_Under-16_Championship_squads#.C2.A0England

 

I honestly believe that if a boy comes through our academy and gets a professional contract he''s a success.

 

 

 

[AJ 1,218]

A very harsh and good point Nutty, whilst we obviously want our youth products to go on and be future stars for our team, we''ve got to be realistic that only one or two will actually do so within each group. Out of our academy I can think of Marshall, Green, Bellamy, Rudd, Martin, Shackell and possibly Angus Gunn/Jed Steer.

In fact I know it''s a few years old, but look just how many players were on our books in 2000 and how few ever even had 1 appearance for the 1st team squad. http://www.ex-canaries.co.uk/players/youth2000.htm

However, a chunk of those players have gone on to get contracts at clubs in the football league which has to be deemed a success. Obviously with money being put into the academy more than ever you''d like to think those getting that far would bring in a bit of money for us, and some have such as McGeehan.

This new crop of players have had money spent on them with the new academy status etc. you''d expect to see a few more making the grade. But it takes time, this is a new development and we won''t see much success out of it immediately, but it''s so important to have that development there so if we do find one future star they''ll either make us a lot of success, or a lot of money.

[norfolkngood 1,086]

I would love us to get to a stage where we can buy younger players the cream from lower league teams

like say Bolton have some very good players under 16 with the state the club is in spend some money bringing them in

I know bigger clubs do it and its less of a risk for them

but if we can get to a point of say up to 1 million a year on the best youngsters we can find 13 , 14 , 15 year olds you would think it would bare fruit in the end ??

only problem is up to 16 we have some of the best players internationals they just seem to stall after that

[AJ 1,218]

Agreed NorfolknGood, the main problem is there is a massive jump between youth football and regular adult football as Toffolo points out in the article on the homepage. There''s a lot of very talented youngsters with bags of skill, but they just can''t cut the mustard with the demands of the football league and fade away