The major story at Liverpool Football Club this summer are which big name stars will or will not arrive, but as this is going on, Rafa Benitez has been slowly and surely adding the best youth talent from every corner of the globe, to the Anfield ranks.
We all talk about Eto`o, Teves and co but we often forget that Rafa has been building this youth empire for the past two seasons, this week he added three more players to the fold by signing the two Hungarians, Krisztian Nemeth, Andras Simon and Swedish teenager Alexander Kacaniklic. This is really a sign of how badly The Liverpool Academy has performed just by the fact that we seem to have to replace most of the youth players with players that Rafa thinks might actually make it to the first team and he cannot be blamed, no player that started at the Academy has become a regular or will be in Liverpool's first team next season. Steven Gerrard spent the last few months of his tutorial there, but he can hardly be labeled a product of the Academy. The target when The Academy was set up was to have one player introduced to the first team each season, so far we have had zero, all we have done is produced players for the Championship and lower divisions.
Whether its down to the present day football youth climate or the miss management of the Academy we may never know, but i think it is in large part to Steve Heighways intolerance to having any interference from the past two managers of Liverpool, men who are more talented than himself in nurturing young talent.
Benitez`s global network of scouts have been as active in searching out the stars of tomorrow as they have been finding the stars that the first team needs today, this is a sign of Rafa`s plans for his and Liverpool's future, It mean we can discard any talk of him leaving Liverpool in the near future because he is here to build a footballing empire in the mould of the past Liverpool teams. He has broken down the old system of the first team manager not interfering in youth team development and we can hardly blame him as the top players in the youth team are players that he has bought.
Already his endeavours into the youth system should pay off, next year i expect to see Paul Anderson been given a go as he has earned rave reviews since his arrival, other players that have a very good chance of breaking through are Besian Idrizaj Jack Hobbs, Godwin Antwi and Astrit Ajdarevic. These are all players that he had to pay to get them to the Academy and these and the others that Rafa bought are in reality the only ones with a real chance to make it into the Liverpool first team.
When the spine of a team is built at the youth level the results can be astounding, Man Utd and the Beckham, Giggs, Scholes, and the ugly brother Nevilles early era is the perfect example, I believe that if that team had come about as the same time as the Chelsea millions, the Man Utd team that had grown together as players would still win the league just because they had already spent so many years playing and knowing each others game so well.
This is what Rafa is trying to achieve, but as always with youth players it is very unpredictable, players that seem great when they are fifteen might fizzle out and by the time there eighteen and may be no better than the Nevilles, so therefore not good enough for Liverpool.
The future`s bright the future`s red, and with Rafa handling the youth team we can expect the spine of the Liverpool teams of tomorrow, to be very much influenced by Rafa`s youth policy of today.
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