On Wednesday night Liverpool’s academy were handed a 5-1 hiding by Sporting Lisbon in the NextGen Series – a competition derived to ‘step into the future of football.’
The result was largely immaterial given the Reds had already qualified from their Champions League-esque group, but with two wins, three defeats and a draw, their step into the future has featured a couple of trips, slips and falls.
According to its own website, NexGen ‘heralds a thrilling new era in competitive football, featuring the next generation of world-class players who have been trained and nurtured by some of the greatest clubs in Europe’ but similarly to the continents elite competition, it also highlights an alarming disparity in resource.
The Sporting academy which topped Liverpool’s group winning five of their six ties is almost entirely compromised of Portuguese components throughout its playing and staff ranks whereas Liverpool’s equivalent has been the source of huge investment and recruitment from all over the world.
The Reds state of the art academy in Kirkby was opened in 1998 and was envisaged as a step up from the previous set-up which provided the Anfield club with a regularly rich production line of talent which still includes Kop legends Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher.
Their three tiers of academy players currently consists of almost 40 players from 15 different nationalities with feeder clubs in Ireland, the United States, Hungary, Belgium and Indonesia. But despite being able to lure players and coaches from all corners of the globe, just how well are Liverpool nurturing the resource?
When he became Liverpool boss in 2004, Rafa Benitez recognised the facilities at his disposal and set about trying to access the academy as a conduit to the first team, with Liverpool procuring and developing young players to integrate into their side to combat ever increasing transfer fees. Liverpool were far from the only club to latch on to the concept and similarly almost every club across the Premier League has attempted to do likewise with fluctuating degrees of success.
Benitez’s Spanish armada was not consigned to signing Xabi Alonso, Fernando Torres and Antonio Nunez. The former Valencia boss convinced Barcelona youth coaches Pep Segura and Rodolfo Burrell to come to Merseyside to oversee the scouse version of Barca’s fabled la Masia stables.
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Think this article is either 5 years late or 5 years early. The nextgen, as with all youth competition is more about learning than winning and as such we are getting what we need out of it. Messi was once overshadowed in a youth tournament by Rodallega and during the 6 Rafa years we got to 3 FA youth cup finals winning 2 but only spearing has been deemed good enough to step into first team. Academy success is not measured in meaningless youth match wins even if they’re good its measured on promotion to first team and this calendar year we’ve had promotions in Kelly, Spearing, Robinson and Flanno if things continue and Coady, Sterling, Morgan and Wisdom follow next year we will be on a roll.
the facts are wrong….pep segura and rodolfo borrell were appointed in the yr 2009…from there on the article is based on wrong facts used to suit your narrativewhich is after a loss to sporting lisbon there are issues in liverpool academy…sporting lisbon ave a great academy.In the same event inter milan lost 7-1 to spurs,that doesnt mean inter academy is bad.one match doesnt define the quality of a team.against wolfsburg they played really good football.We ave progressed to next round.this loss is a wake up call.with that being said we ave improve our performance and take it to the next level..
Man city has spent even more money on their academy than us and pulled out of the reserve league to concentrate more on nextgen yet went out on nil points. Sporting has one of the best academies for years and get a lot of first team players through it whereas we have only just begun revolutionizing our academy. But our academy is doing its job providing squad players for the first team so we don’t have to spend 8 million and large wages on Dossena and Degen because we have Flanno an Robo that’s what we need an academy for so when we spend money instead of having to sign 8 players for 40 million we have 5 academy lads promoted and sign 3 better players for 40 million and its something that’s already starting so nothing to worry about.