Pre-season is under way for most clubs and expectations for the 2013-14 season are high. Managers are looking over players to see who will fit into their plans and looking at potential transfer targets to bolster their squads.
For the youth players in the teams this will be their first experience at a real job. Second year apprentices will be hoping they can try and break into their first team, while first years will want the manager to take notice of them and maybe secure a regular reserve team spot.
It’s at this time of year, when the fans start to look at the current youth crop and begin to seek wonder kids. These are players that can bring success to their club, or who can be sold for millions and help the club grow.
But a real question that we should consider is this: do the youngsters in today’s game have hunger to be the best anymore? The Premiership apprentices aren’t turning up to training grounds at 9 in the morning to scrub the first team player’s boots and polish them before they begin training. Instead, you now see youth team players strolling up in the latest car with a designer wash bag tucked underneath their arm.
Greats of the past such as Kevin Keegan, Kenny Daglish and Alan Hansen didn’t turn up to their respective training grounds in flashy car. They rode the public buses with the other working classes who were about to start their nine to five factory jobs.
When you are sitting on a cramped bus to get into to training early to clean boots caked in mud, before going and training for two hours in the cold and wet with hand-me-down training equipment. In those situations, of course the desire to get better is there.
Manchester United Under 18's - 1991
It’s a lot easier to get comfy in life when you are strolling up to training in a car with all the latest training gear at your call and three pairs of boots to choose from, which have all been cleaned by a boot man. Some of these 17-year-olds are earning as much in a year as some working class families.
The England U-21 side has come under a lot of criticism recently for the whole set up from the F.A. to the manager to the players. But when was the last time Connor Wickham or Thomas Ince scrubbed a players boots? How did they turn up to practice this morning? The desire to be a top footballer and work hard to make it to the top seems to be slipping out of the English game, and therefore affecting the national side.
The Manchester United youth side of the 90’s that consisted of the Neville brothers, Paul Scholes, David Beckham and Ryan Giggs didn’t make their way to the Cliff (Manchester United’s training home before Carrington) in a sports car. And they certainly didn’t jet off to a luxury Mediterranean island for a three-week training camp. Instead they were running around the local forest for fitness training and cleaning the likes of Brian McClair and Steve Bruce’s boots. And we all know how far those names have made it in the game.
At Birmingham City in 2008 Olivier Kapo gave his boot boy James McPike a $45,000 Mercedes. Needless to say McPike now plays at Kettering Town of the Evo-Stick Southern League.
I am not saying that this example alone should be enough of a reason to say that none of the youth players at the top level clubs will not go on to fame and glory. Wayne Rooney has done it at Everton to and Lionel Messi at Barcelona to name but a few.
But more often than not, the better youth players in England come from the lower league clubs, where they are not fed off a silver spoon but made to work for everything they get and for the amounts of hours they spend cleaning boots, training and running around doing things for the first team players and coaches, are on less than minimum wage.
Crewe Alexandra and Tranmere Rovers are two lower league clubs that have managed to make millions from their youth systems. Credit has to go to Dario Gradi and Warwick Rimmer in overseeing the youth programs, but the way these two clubs nurture these players is what sets up England’s youth with the right recipe to want to play for the shirt they are wearing.
Every England fan would give their left arm to play for the three lions. Now it appears that the players do not care. If you watch lower league football you will know that the players in the bottom divisions play with more passion than someone at the top. There is always more hunger to make it to the top when you’re at the bottom.
If the Premiership clubs used the old school methods of pre-season training that the lower league clubs do, then maybe we would see more passion, desire and heart from the English youngsters and make the national team a team that all the players would give everything for every time they stepped onto the pitch.
Who was the last England player you could say played with his heart on his sleeve?
