Promising result from the other night sees Liverpool going into the Second Leg of the FA Youth Cup Final in a commanding position. Memories of Istanbul (and a mention of Boro’s recent UEFA Cup exploits) are being used against us. Here’s hoping it doesn’t ring true, it couldn’t, could it?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/4908636.stm

So is there a new Owen and Carragher (or even Thompson and Newby) among the current crop of Academy starlets. We’ll have to wait for the final against Man City (who defeated Newcastle in the other semi - another trophy goes begging) to see.

Here’s hoping!

http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/news/article324964.ece

Whatever happened to Andy Turner? At 17, when he made his Tottenham Hotspur debut on the day the Premiership was launched, he had the world and the flying boots of one of the game’s most terrifying tacklers at his feet. Then came injuries, disillusionment, a 21-strong list of clubs and his virtual disappearance from the football radar.

*article continues…*

Seeing names such as Andy Turner and Darren Caskey (the latter of which was an England U20s captain) reminds me of some other young Spurs from their era who fell by the wayside like Danny Hill, Stuart Nethorcott, Chris Day and Steve Slade. Some of these boys were very highly rated but failed to turn that promise into a top level career and most spent their best years drifting about through club after club in the lower leagues. Obviously this isn’t a totally new phenomonen(sp?) but I’m quite sure the foreign influx has contributed to worsening it and the effects will be felt in the domestic game for quite a while to come.

Spurs is maybe a bad example because we have always managed to keep a healthy amount of young homegrown talent coming through the ranks, with Ledley King being the latest England international example, but how many top clubs can say that these days? The A*senal batch of young players have all been poached from foreign sides and there is hardly a British player amongst them while the fabled Manchester United youth system seems to have built all of it’s reputation on one exceptional batch of players who came through at the same time i.e. Beckham, Scholes, Butt, Gary Neville etc. but as JD says in the article, what happened to the rest and why have no more followed?

FIFA and UEFA have to look long and hard at the game worldwide and start to decide whether this eternal chase for sponsors’ money and boom or bust player trading between clubs isn’t destroying the very foundations the game has been built on.

Having seen good young players like Andy Turner, Darren Caskey etc failed to make it at Spurs, it’s extremely tough for a youth players, as talent alone might not be enough…

I also couldn’t help but wondering whether the days when the best of the Home Nations (plus Eire) would be a permanent fixture in the team sheets of the top clubs are gone forever. Some of the best Spurs in the past were from Scotland (D Mackay), N Ireland (D Blanchflower) and Wales (Mike England). The post-Bosman development has made it all but impossible for the youth players to breakthrough.

The casaulty rate (or failure to turn pro) for youth players are always high. But in this new age, it saddens me to see some of the major clubs brought in numerous young talents over the world, and dumped them after a couple of seasons. - it’s unsurprising that Brazil has made it a law against “trafficking of young players”.

I do hope the FA and PFA will continue to work together to assist players who dropped out of the game, especially the young players, as they are the ones most vulnerable to life after football.