Storm Clouds on the Horizon?

By: Martin | September 9th, 2009

Since there’s nothing else going on due to the international break, I thought I’d take the opportunity to write something a little less topical that I’ve been worrying about lately. I think FIFA’s recent crackdown on Chelsea and other clubs could be a very bad omen indeed for Arsenal.

As you have no doubt heard, FIFA recently handed down a decision which prohibits Chelsea from making any purchases over the next 2 transfer windows. It will almost certainly be reduced on appeal, but it’s a serious penalty nonetheless. Now FIFA has apparently set its sights on Manchester City.

The reason for these inquiries is that both clubs allegedly signed young players who were under contract (or “precontract”) with another club at the time. Therefore, since another club owned the rights to the player, any club who wanted such a player must first come to an agreement with the player’s initial club.

The initial reaction, of course, is to revel in Chelsea’s misfortune. Chelsea is an aging team who is very dependent on spending money in the transfer market, so this ban stands to hurt them badly if it is not reduced. And it’s always fun to see Chelsea hurt. Ditto Manchester City.

But after some reflection, this could be an ominous sign of things to come for Arsenal. It’s not that I think we’ve committed any infractions, although the signing of Fran Merida from Barcelona was pretty similar to the incident for which Chelsea was punished. But generally speaking, the young players we have signed for free (Cesc, for example) have been players who are not under contract at a club. And the young players we have gone after who have been under contract at their clubs (like Theo or Aaron Ramsey), we have negotiated a deal with the club before bringing the players in. We seem to have followed the rules within the system, and I don’t see us getting in any trouble for our transfer policy.

Where this is a problem, though, is that Sepp Blatter has said that he would like to end all transfers involving players under the age of 18. Under his proposed system, every player under the age of 18 would train with their initial club until that point, and only then would they be able to switch clubs.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that no club in the world is as dependent upon bringing in young players from other clubs as Arsenal is. It’s the cornerstone of Arsene Wenger’s transfer policy. So if this were to change, then, Arsenal would be substantially affected, and have to seriously re-think our way of doing things.

I’ll say at the outset that from an objective viewpoint, Blatter’s proposal is shortsighted and badly flawed. The idea is that local clubs should be able to hang onto the players they bring in until the players are substantially developed, instead of having their best starlets picked over by bigger clubs. The idea is not without a certain simplistic appeal.

Where it falls apart, however, is its implicit assumption that players will develop roughly the same no matter which club they are with. This is, obviously, completely and utterly idiotic. The big clubs have spent tens of millions of dollars on their training academies, and can boast world-class facilities and some of the finest coaches, trainers, and instructors in the world. Smaller clubs cannot. It only stands to reason that players will develop better and more quickly with better coaching, equipment, and medical care. Therefore, it is only logical to say that if you take a player from a smaller club in Africa at the age of 15, he would develop into a better player by the time he was 18 than he would if he was forced to stay in Africa.

Or think of it this way–if you have an academically gifted 15 year old from a very bad inner city area, should he stay at the dilapidated, overcrowded, high school, being taught by teachers more concerned with maintaining order than communicating ideas? Or should he be transferred to the magnet school across town, reserved for the best and brightest students, where he will be taught by the best teachers in the district, at a higher level, and surrounded by students of roughly his level of intelligence? Does anyone honestly think that the student wouldn’t be better off academically by the time he was 18 going to the magnet school than staying at his public school? Does anyone honestly think that learning about math is any different than learning about football in this respect? So one hugely negative result of Blatter’s proposal would be that, on the whole, many players would not receive the level of training they otherwise would have, and will not be able to realize their full potential.

Blatter’s proposal also completely misunderstands one of the most fundamental notions about football as opposed to other sports, which is that it is the ultimate team game. By this, I do not mean that each individual player must shoulder his burden equally–while this is true, it’s equally true of other sports. What I mean is that each player must buy into the team’s system more than probably any other sport. Most teams (well, most successful teams, anyway) have a distinct and particular strategy and approach to the game, and in order to succeed, all 11 players must fill their role within that system. In other words, a left-back for Arsenal has a very different job than a left-back for Chelsea or Stoke. If someone is a very good player for one club, he will not necessarily be a very good player for another club, because his new club may play completely differently and have completely different demans for a player in that position than his old club (see Shevchenko, Andrei).

There are two ways to have a team that plays well together. One is through scouting established players–you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of their skills and abilities, and determine whether the player can fulfill a particular role within your club’s system. By and large, this is what clubs like Chelsea and Real Madrid have done, to great success. The other way is to teach all of your young players in the academy to play that particular style, so that by the time they are ready to step up to the first-team, they have been playing the club’s style for years and are well-acquainted with its demands and goals.

What Arsenal does is combine the two–we find teenagers who have the potential to develop into world-class players and we teach them from a young age to play football “the Arsenal way.” After 3-4 years in the academy and reserves, they are typically prepared to have some role in the first team, and have thoroughly developed an understanding of the way Arsenal play and what their role in the system should be.

However, they younger you are, the easier it is to teach you new things. It’s much easier for a 15 or 16 year old to adapt to a new style of play than a 20 year old. If Arsenal is limited to bringing in players of over 18 or more, Wenger’s transfer policy is simply not going to work anywhere near as well as it has thus far. And I happen to believe that clubs like Arsenal, or Manchester United, or Barcelona, who train young players to play within a certain system and then use the players to implement that system on the club level once they are ready for the first-team should be rewarded, not punished, for doing this.

But in the end, my views on whether this proposal would be good or bad for the game are immaterial. What we can all definitely agree on is that it would certainly be bad for Arsenal. Arsenal’s advantage has long been the ability to identify, train, and develop young talent. This has been the main way Arsenal has been able to stay competitive with clubs who spend a lot more money on the transfer market than we do. This proposal would partially negate that competitive advantage, and make it that much more difficult for the Gunners to succeed.

To illustrate, the following Arsenal players were brought in before their 18th birthday:

Fabregas
Senderos
Vela
Walcott
Ramsey
Djourou
Clichy
Mannone
Gibbs
Traore
Merida
Bendtner

That’s 12 out of 29, or 41.4% first-team players. All of whom Arsenal would not have been able to sign (at the point when they signed for us, anyway) had Blatter’s proposed system been in place.

Such a system would be bad for the players, bad for the game, and most importantly, bad for Arsenal, so here’s hoping it never comes to pass. But it’s definitely something that bears watching.