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<...> brought him some attention and a move to Avranches in the Championnat National (the French third tier).

“A friend introduced him to me,” Damien Ott, Avranches manager at the time, tells The Athletic. “I was not interested in his CV. But from the first minutes of training, I noticed that he had great potential. He was a good footballer, but the man was not rigorous. He had no standards, no rules. He arrived late, slept late. He was not serious in life, often partying, but he was a good guy. He set the mood in the locker room.”

Then, finally, in 2017 at the age of 24, Clauss was awarded his first full-time professional contract when he moved to Quevilly-Rouen in Ligue 2. His wages were a princely €500 a week. Quevilly-Rouen were relegated, but Clauss earned a move <...>

<...>his father, Jean-Luc, told L’Equipe. “And it’s as if everything we’d all been preaching to him for a long time suddenly made sense. He was mature, finally, and all of a sudden he grasped all the notions of rigour, discipline and mental preparation. He understood that there was no reason for him not to succeed and he was on his way.”

Ott adds: “His move to Germany did him a lot of good. German rigour transformed him. His mind improved. He started to work a lot.”

In the 2019-20 season, before Mitchell and Bunce arrived, the club ranked 76th across the top five European leagues for total distance covered, 85th for high-speed running, 39th for sprint distance and 88th for accelerations. Last season, Monaco improved these numbers to the extent they were 3rd for total distance, 3rd for high-speed running, 3rd for sprint distance and 23rd for accelerations. For the uninitiated, total distance refers to every metre a team runs on the pitch at any speed. High-speed running refers to anything up to 24-25km per hour, while sprint distance is anything above 25 km per hour. Accelerations are more complex to measure, Bunce explains, because “it is an impact, a hit into the ground and a turn”.

This week, Monaco invited The Athletic behind the scenes, to shadow performance staff, observe training and pull up the blinds on one of European football’s most compelling projects.

“We were always really clear we were dealing with children and it was compensation, not a transfer fee,” says Saunders. “The system was designed to compensate clubs for the training and investment they had put into young players (in the event they moved on to a different academy).

<...>One chairman of a lower-league club:

“We have had other players who have stayed with us beyond 16 and been sold at 19 or 20 to clubs higher up the leagues, and the money we have raised — millions of pounds — has directly paid for new academy facilities.

He praised the sell-on clauses written into deals by the PFCC, and the drip-feed of extra fees that kick in when the departed player goes on to represent his new club. “But, with sell-ons in particular, that money would normally only kick in five or six years down the line, which does not help our cashflow on a day-to-day basis,” he adds.

Choupo-Moting’s story is telling in a number of ways. It proves, as he discussed with the Times, the value of patience. The timing of his rise suggests a shift in what elite clubs want from forward players, and as a corollary perhaps highlights a deficiency in the academy system. That tends, after all, to produce what teams want now, rather than what they might need in the future.

Most of all, though, it illustrates that Choupo-Moting did not fail to shine at Stoke because of a lack of talent. Ability is often not what determines whether a move is successful or not. More important is whether the team, the style, the environment is right for a player to thrive. Choupo-Moting is evidence of the old truth that there is no such thing as a bad player, only the wrong context.

“As a player, of course you have goals,” Choupo-Moting said in an interview last week. “But I always try to be happy for what I have. The highest level of success is happiness. I was happy at Hamburg, at Mainz, at Schalke. I was never sitting at home thinking: I am 24 already, I should be playing at another level. What if I don’t sign for a ‘big club’ this summer?

“You hear people ask why this player is at that club or another player at another club,” he said. “But you have to remember: Big clubs have a lot of quality people observing players.

“If a player gets there, they deserve to be there. After that, it is on you, on the player, to show your potential, to show you deserve to stay at that level. With time, the quality you have determines if you get the chance. Some players get that chance straightaway. Sometimes you have to work more. But if you work hard, success will come.”

Even so, a key part of Madrid’s strategy is to recruit Atletico players before they turn 16, as this is the point at which they can sign their first professional contracts with a club, which would require negotiations and a fee.
https://theathletic.com/4882121/2023/09/22/real-madrid-atletico-youth-pact/

Galinson says. “I saw that we’re ranked in last place out of the 92 for away fans to visit (the away stand is an uncovered stand). <...>“For League Two, our capacity is about 12,000, which is totally appropriate and because of the uncovered stand, we’re not at capacity for every game yet.
https://theathletic.com/4874103/2023/09/22/gillingham-us-takeover-galinson/

“Last year, 40 per cent of the kids getting contracts in the J.League last year came from high schools and 60 per cent were coming from the actual J.League academies,” Byer tells The Athletic.

“It’s a pathway because Japanese high schools specialise in football from when the kids join. These schools and universities train and probably play more games than a professional club does.

“Japanese culture allows that when a six-year-old boy or girl joins the football club, they train at a minimum of four times a week, sometimes two hours to three hours per session. The season lasts basically 45 weeks a year. There is a cost to that: overtraining, burnout, injuries, some mental health issues. But there are iconic high schools here that are more famous and have more status than J1 clubs.”

With no off-season and no class barrier to playing, since it costs almost nothing to play football in Japan, Byer believes the mounting numbers of Japanese players thriving in Europe’s top leagues can be traced back to the technical revolution of the 1990s.

Byer was featured on Japan’s No 1 show for children every weekday morning for 14 years presenting a technical skills show and in the No 1 comic that sold 1.3million copies per month. <...>“I always say that if you want to really change a country, develop a little army of little five- and six-year-old boys and girls that are skilled in ball mastery and then just let them play.

But the figure of 17,552 season ticket holders who took up the option to move there was still a surprise. There is a long list of fans waiting for a seat at the Camp Nou and getting one can seem impossible. Season tickets usually belong to elderly fans who pass the seats on to their family members, meaning they are always in demand.

So, where have all the Barca season ticket holders gone?

<...>The cost of tickets is a recurring explanation given to The Athletic by fans who have chosen not to attend games this season.

<...>and failed to see the appeal of the Lluis Companys. The athletics track surrounding the pitch makes visibility difficult and he preferred to do without the paperwork to secure his seat there.

<...>Then there are those who prefer not to go as the stadium is less comfortable than the Camp Nou. They were put off by the high prices and not having a fixed seat in the ground. The idea of going up and down the hill twice a week for La Liga and Champions League matches did not appeal.

<...>Finally, there are those older socios who cannot get used to the idea of Montjuic being home. The Lluis Companys was the home of city rivals Espanyol from 1997 to 2009 and there is none of the emotional connection fans had with the Camp Nou. One 65-year-old man who asked to remain anonymous turned down a season ticket at Montjuic as his seat at the old ground had become such a significant part of his life.

“I wouldn’t feel at home,” he says.

Many would agree with him.

Two years ago, a talent scout from Fluminense saw the boy, whose real name is Leandro Gomes Feitosa, play in a local tournament and approached his family. The boy was only 9, and Brazilian law does not allow soccer clubs to house children under 14. But if the family could get to Rio, the scout said, Fluminense would train him.

A group of local businessmen put up the money — for a cut of future proceeds — and the family moved more than 1,200 miles, from the town of Palmas to Xerém, to pursue the dream.

<...>The chances of making it are slim. Fewer than 5 percent of the soccer prospects in Brazil will ever make it as professionals, by most estimates. Fewer still will earn a decent wage in the game. A study published by the Brazilian soccer federation in 2016 found that 82 percent of soccer players in the country earned less than 1,000 reais ($265) each month.

<...>[Romeo Jozak, a man who, over the past 25 years, has held almost every significant role in Croatian football] — heading Dinamo Zagreb’s academy and becoming technical director of the Croatian FA, before returning to Dinamo as their sporting chief. Arsenal noticed — attempting to hire him as academy director in 2013 after the retirement of the legendary Liam Brady. But Jozak opted to remain in Croatia, where he had worked his way up from coaching Dinamo’s under-11s to literally writing the nation’s player development manual.

<...>“And I can ask the same question back — why have Serbia done so much better in basketball than us? We’ve struggled since Drazen Petrovic’s time in the 1990s. But I think the answer is the same — from 2000 onwards, we’ve had a clear structure of football governance and strategy in the country.”

<...>“In terms of having players who could impact the national team, one huge criterion is internal competition,” explains Jozak. “Never mind 11 — if you have 20 players in a squad fighting against each other on a daily basis, they have to improve to survive. So we wanted to bring the best talent to Dinamo to create the most competitive internal competition against each other. And when it was not sufficient to play against the other Croatian teams, we would put them in to play against the higher age groups — the under-16s against the under-18s, the under-18s would play the under-20s, and so on. We artificially created these conditions.

<...>“But we always tried to push them towards the middle. It would improve your reactions, positioning, tactics, mentality… you’d physically be running the most. And then, even if you aren’t good enough to play central midfield professionally, you will probably be good enough for your primary position.”

<...>“You have to understand — there’s three and a half million of us <>We have some talent, but we don’t have a huge pool of talent, right? So when we see a fragile talent — a talent that might not reach its full potential if it’s not cherished — we have to nourish it. We had a tolerance for their mistakes. <>We had to look after them. This is what we had.”

<...>“Once, at Dinamo Zagreb, we had open tryouts. Kids came from across the whole of the Balkans. We had 25 of the most talented boys, they all came onto the pitch, and when the coach asked where they played, 24 of them said they were midfielders.”

<...>After moving leaving Dinamo to become technical director of the Croatian FA in 2013, Jozak impressed the importance of five criteria in becoming an elite side:

• Producing a high quantity of young talent


• Employing a high-quality coach


• Establishing a replicable programme across the academy age groups


• Manufacturing a high level of internal competition


• Challenging the best talent with external competition

To this end, he literally wrote the country’s coaching manual — identifying over 100 technical traits for coaches to spot and develop. <>Jozak is now working for the Saudi Arabian FA as technical director of the Future Falcons, a national project to produce a squad of outstanding domestic players for the 2034 World Cup.

After England won the women’s European Championship in 2022, the FA’s insights team examined the footballing journeys of 37 senior Lionesses. “The one thing every one of them had in common was that they had all played football with boys,” says Tessa Payne, the senior club talent pathway manager at the FA.

“For the majority of them, they’d actually been the only girl in a boys’ team. Not only were they playing against boys, but with boys, which challenges them to another level because they’ve got to be able to keep up with the speed of play.” Their involvement was two-fold. For some, playing in a boys’ team was, Payne says, “the only opportunity they had” in the absence of local girls’ sides. “And secondly,” Payne continues, “from a talent-development perspective, we recognise there are a number of benefits that come with girls having the opportunity to play with and against boys.”

Her colleague Emma Jenks, the FA’s women’s pathways manager, lists those benefits: a technical challenge — “how they play with the ball, the decision-making and the speed of the game” — and, of course, physicality. “With the younger age groups, that physical challenge is about the movement of players who are able to shift their body and change direction at an increased speed,” she says. “With older age groups, it’s a physical use of the body within the game.”

England had one of the lowest age limits for mixed football in the world. At that time, the cut-off level in Scotland, France and Portugal was under-15; in Germany and Italy, under-17; in Belgium, under-18; in Switzerland and the Netherlands, under-19. Denmark, Spain, Northern Ireland and Poland did not have any upper age limit.

“MLS last year had 12.1 million attendees,” he said. “That’s second only to the Premier League and above the Bundesliga. When I saw that figure, I was taken aback. I was astonished. Why? Because, of course, there’s a population of 350 million people in the U.S. and soccer will pick up. The World Cup is coming. Fans will be more interested in soccer.”

“MLS and I can see also that it’s right at the tip of the iceberg for us,” he continued. “That’s why we made a sizable investment.” Mansour made a point to credit MLS commissioner Don Garber with this important step.

“I think the takeaway with the (new) timing of the league, that it equates with the FIFA (calendar), is a good move,” Mansour said. “It’ll show what MLS really is to the world. And people can watch it more and get more excited about it. I’m a firm believer in MLS because I’m a firm believer first in American athleticism and American sports. I’ve lived here for maybe 10 years of my life when I was a college undergrad and a grad student.

The protests erupted over “unacceptable” £77 tickets. In 2016, when Liverpool announced new prices ranging from the equivalent of $13 to $110 for a seat at Anfield, fans united and voiced their disgust<...>, the owners apologized “for the distress” and walked back the top ticket price to £59. Nine years later, their most expensive ticket, to see one of the planet’s most popular sports teams, is £61 (or $82).

The cheapest ticket to an average NFL game is around $169, per an Athletic analysis earlier this season — more than every single standard English Premier League ticket except those in the most expensive tier for the most appealing games at Arsenal. <...>the average range in the Premier League, whose popularity dwarfs MLS, was roughly $55-$90.

<...>As a result, on the business side, soccer’s biggest clubs make less than 20% of their revenue from ticket sales and other matchday revenue streams — whereas most U.S. teams generate more than 30% of their income from those sources, according to Sportico.

He warned that this could actually have the opposite effect intended, as players using sleeping pills were not getting proper recovery sleep.

“I think we are becoming more wary,” he tells The Athletic. “What I found heartbreaking with the Dele interview was that he thought sleeping pills were helping him sleep, but they don’t — they knock you out.

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