On January 18th, the Netherlands’ premier soccer club Ajax Amsterdam was fined for a banner that supporters unveiled during a Champions League match against Manchester City in October. The banner read “Against Modern Football,” and a picture above it showed a cartoon picture of the Qatari Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The fine has seen much attention as many feel the banner was not offensive, and for the fact they believe it raised a valid point. The fact of the matter is modern football is dominated by the clubs with the deepest pockets.
For the past few years, al-Nahyan and the rest of the Qatari ruling family has spent hundreds of millions of dollars not only in the purchase of the club, but in buying some of the world’s best players. City has always been in the over-shadow of their neighboring club Manchester United. United has won 19 league titles and countless other trophies, while City were rarely even heard from. City’s lack of relevance resulted in the ironic nickname of “the noisy neighbors.” However, when the Sheikh’s took over, City was able to regain prominence relatively quickly. Last season City won their first Premier League title in over four decades and the year before they won the Football Association Cup.
However, City has always been under much scrutiny for how they won matches. Their new owners simply bought talent. Prior to last season, City purchased Samir Nasri from Arsenal and Sergio Aguero from Athletico Madrid for a combined 72 million pounds ($112,795,200 U.S.) The season before that, City bought only three players, but for 77 million pounds ($120,628,200.00.) The point is, a once middle-of-the-pack team turned into a trophy winning club simply due to new extremely wealthy ownership.
Similar trends are found across the soccer world. Fellow English club Chelsea, owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abromovic, has spent its share on players, most notable Fernando Torres for 50 million pounds ($78,535) from Liverpool. Other teams such as France’s Paris St. Germain (also owned by Qataris) and Russia’s Anzhi Makhachkala have come out of nowhere all because of billionaire owners bringing their teams into prominence. Paris St. Germain (PSG) was able to lure AC Milan’s two best players to the French capital and Anzhi was able to buy one of the best strikers in the game in Samuel Eto’o. They also made him the highest paid player in the world.
These clubs, as deep as their pockets may be, are not dominating the world stage however. Yes, City won the league last season and Chelsea may have won the Champions League, but Anzhi and PSG don’t have the success that goes with the buying. Not to mention the fact that Chelsea’s Champions League run was mostly orchestrated by the veterans of the club like Peter Cech, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, John Terry and Didier Drogba. This season, Chelsea spent millions on players like Edin Hazard, Oscar, and other stars. However, they are sitting well out of the hunt for the league title, and became the first defending European Champions to not advance past the group stages of the Champions League.
The new age of football has become quite a paradox. The big spending clubs buy the star talent from the other clubs, but they often fail to make a major difference. Ajax, the team fined for their banner, has one of the most successful and highly regarded youth systems in the world. They turned out legends such as Edwin Van der Sar and Johann Cruyff. More recently, stars such as Wesley Sneijder, Thomas Vermaelen and Luis Suarez have come from Ajax. Lower level English sides Leeds United and West Ham also have been churning out stars for some time. West Ham has turned out several English national team members such as Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Glen Johnson, and Jermain Defoe. Leeds has graduated players such as legend Alan Smith, as well as current stars Aaron Lennon and James Milner.
Possibly the most famous youth academy is FC Barcelona’s. So famous in fact that it was featured recently on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Barcelona has been rolling players out in a remarkable fashion with players like Xavi, Victor Valdes, Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Lionel Messi, Pedro Rodriguez, Sergio Busquets, Pepe Reina, Cesc Fabregas and Gerard Pique. This “golden generation” is no one-and-done either. Barcelona’s future is looking bright as homegrown talent in Issac Cuenca Cristian Tello, Thiago, and Gerard Deulofeu. All have shown they are ready to take the next step. These players have been taught the Barcelona brand of football, (known as tiki-taka) which consists of combinations of short passes, since very young ages and have been playing with one another for many years at the youth level as well as the first team. The difference with Barcelona is they’ve been able to keep their young talent. Barcelona has had immense success, winning 14 trophies in the last three years and almost all of their stars came from the club’s youth system.
The lesson to be learned from Barcelona is to invest in your youth. Instead of spending millions on a bunch of stars that may not be able to play together, try and develop a brand and a pedigree of young talent. When it comes time your star youngsters want to leave, spend the big money on them. Team chemistry is extremely undervalued. If you have 11 players who have been playing together since their youth and know how to play your team’s style of football, winning games will come. That’s how these Barcelona players are able to make the jump to the first team so easily. They are uninitiated by their surrounding and, instead, know how to play the famous tiki-taka style that they have been taught for years.
There is a phrase that goes “the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.” In the case of football, a well-developed youth system with committed players is better than any squad simply thrown together by hundreds of millions of dollars.