Quote Originally Posted by Monaco_Totty View Post
Fair points WTF.👍

But the concept of 'human capital' recognizes that not all labour is equal. But employers can improve the quality of that capital by investing in employees via education, experience & abilities of said employees.
So not disputing 'all of this with regard to Academies' which has greater economic value for employers but how do we or any club outside the top 6 establish a football dynasty then nowadays ?

For decades, the orthodox, long-range formula was to establish ''excellence within the youth team'' & recruit complementary talent & then facilitate those with club values 'within their veins' to set standards & help to run the dressing room for a Coach or Manager.

Chelsea brought the idea into a new dimension for wider public consciousness by splashing big bucks on global youth talent but obviously they're not reinventing the wheel biz wise but added a twist.
But where Chelsea differed originally was in handing out 8 year deals.

Those long deals where a risk but what if such a signing fails to produce ?
What if you are stuck with an underperforming player for 8 years ?
Of course Chelsea will feel that putting their new young signings on relatively modest wages would guard against them being lumbered with flops so they've also signed a few players who they hope will improve too.

The immediate problem for Chelsea now, however, is that Uefa reacted last summer, 2023, by shutting the loophole. European football’s governing body decided that from last summer onwards clubs will still be able to offer long deals but will be limited to spreading out the cost of fees to a 5 year period leaving Chelsea needing a new ploy to indulge into again.

Football Academy set-up's have changed into today’s globalised industry, so now it's all geopolitics & venture capital, so the chances of a Beckham or going further back a Lorimer, to have gone on to the first team are zero as they would have been sold well before they reached their peak.

Are our youth teams now a revenue stream rather than the fundament of the former "glory game" thus becoming big business rather than the sporting community endeavour i'm now concluding.

So for balance how do you assess our Academy now & how do you measure & value football academies across the board too. 🤔

Just saying.
All but your last paragraph are not much more than wishful thinking. Whether it relates to billionaire owners or sovereign states, those who own the most prestigious clubs (Citeh, PSG etc), and many in somewhat less hallowed echelons, regard players as nothing more and nothing less than corporate assets, pretending or asserting otherwise is delusional.

And to the last paragraph.......

The LUFC academy specifically has shown itself capable of developing first class young talent, however the club has demonstrated a long-standing inability, common across almost all clubs in the top three tiers of the English professional game, to provide the opportunity of those your players to blossom into the true talented professionals they could be. It has fallen to other clubs, perhaps with a more enlightened view, to make that possible.

"Across the board".......club's with the financial wherewithall hoover up junior talent in order to prevent them being acquired by "lesser" clubs, they consistently stifle opportunity just as LUFC do internally, and we end up with the various national leagues delivering next to nothing for young players, whether from the home nations or brought in from abroad as talented youngsters.

Show me what England can do to demonstrate that the national team can make what they do and how they perform that makes any of what I have said above as being even faintly inaccurate.