In a wide-ranging debate on the latest Big Question show, Gareth Roberts, Melissa Reddy, John Gibbons, Rick McEvoy and Dan Austin get stuck into the subject of developing youth.
Is success measured only by those who make the first team? How hard is it to unearth talent? What about the welfare of children at a crucial stage of their lives? And are the rules and regulations that govern recruitment and transfers of young players right, proper and fair?
All this and more in another debate on one of football’s big issues.
Superb listen – genuinely informative if not a worrying given some of the cash incentives available at some Academies – especially given the age of those involved in the system. But Liverpool FC have clearly got the welfare of all at the Academy at heart and something for us who follow the club have to be grateful for. Have to feel for those involved with Tranmere and that section highlights why it is so vital that more of the riches locked in at the highest level filters down to the grass roots. A 65 minute podcast with great input from all involved throughout. Podcasts like this are exactly what makes The Anfield Wrap the outstanding award winners they are.
As an American, the whole top clubs trying to remove the compensation fees for kids is a huge problem in the US. There isn’t a distribution of the transfer fees to a player’s former/boyhood clubs. As the MLS and USSF run the show hand in hand, all the money for an MLS player moving overseas goes into the pool of all the MLS teams and then gets distributed from there to only MLS teams. For instance, when DeAndre Yedlin went to England, the Sounders got the large chunk of transfer money and the other MLS franchises got a smaller amount. The clubs he played for before Seattle and before college got nothing. I’m really hoping English football doesn’t get to the point where all the Premier league teams hold all of the power like MLS because of SUM and USSF.