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Drain of young talent abroad is becoming a worrying trend for Premier League clubs

Rabbi Matondo - Drain of young talent abroad is becoming a worrying trend
Manchester City want a hefty fee for youngster Rabbi Matondo Credit: Getty Images

Of all the Premier League clubs entered, Manchester City have the last under-21s team in the Checkatrade Trophy, a side chiefly made up of teenagers in the quarter-finals of the competitions alongside the likes of Bury, Bristol Rovers and Port Vale. City’s young talent are up against Sunderland who, it should be pointed out, are eight places higher in League One than Burton Albion, whom the first team have already demolished in their Carabao Cup semi-final first leg.

That is just another measure of how hard it is to succeed at English football’s most ambitious club, that even when the first team are facing inferior opposition to the under-21s, the big names still want to play.

No one is in any doubt that City have turned their youth development programme into the only one that rivals the success of Chelsea over the past 10 years, and that the quality of their players is as high as it has ever been, but for these boys the first team still remains distant.

The club are braced this month to lose another one who has turned down a big second professional contract to stay. The Wales international Rabbi Matondo, capped at just 18 by Ryan Giggs against Albania in November, is generally regarded at City to be the fastest player they have, and that includes Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane. Matondo has never played beyond under-23s for his club and could well follow Jadon Sancho to the Bundesliga as early as this month.

Matondo is more likely to go to Borussia Monchengladbach although there is interest from RB Leipzig and Hoffenheim too. He is under contract at City until the summer of next year. The club are unwilling to let it drag on that long and see his price set at tribunal. He could leave this month for a fee, and the asking price from City is £10 million. It is hard to decide which is more remarkable: the fact they would value a teenager with no first-team appearances at that much or that there would be some willing to pay for it.

The Bundesliga drain is taking hold at City just as the years of honing their scouting and developing model is making them arguably the pre-eminent youth development club in the English game. They lost Brahim Diaz earlier this month to Real Madrid and while the preference was for him to stay, there is an acceptance that not every good player can be kept. A €1 million investment for a €19 million return felt like a good deal and the progress of Phil Foden and Eric Garcia has demonstrated that some players are getting through.

Matondo, signed originally from Cardiff City, is a more difficult one to accept. The club are simply producing, it seems, too many good players for the first team to contemplate absorbing. The Sancho effect has changed English football and the mindset of players at its top academies within the space of a single year. There is a story that when England Under-17s played, and beat, their Brazil counterparts at AFC Telford’s New Bucks Head stadium in October there was a representative of almost every Bundesliga club’s scouting department in attendance.

Some believe that German clubs could come unstuck if they overspend on young English boys who are not quite the first line of talent, but for those currently in demand such as Callum Hudson-Odoi and Matondo the investment is regarded as extremely solid. Liverpool’s 17-year-old midfielder Curtis Jones, who made his senior debut against Wolves in the FA Cup this month, is another attracting interest in Europe. The teenagers in question are being offered professional deals worth as much or more than those on the table from their English clubs with the greater incentive of first-team football.

Jadon Sancho - Drain of young talent abroad is becoming a worrying trend
Jadon Sancho (right) left City on favour of first-team football with Borussia Dortmund Credit: Getty Images

For Matondo, it is hard to find an argument for him staying. At 18, like many of his elite peers in the City Under-21s team, all the tests devised for him by the English development game have already been overcome. City play their 18-year-olds in Premier League 2, the Under-23s league, although they have their doubts about it. “It’s no competition,” Pep Guardiola complained recently. The Checkatrade Trophy gives those same boys a handful of games against professional opposition. But at 18, and a fully-fledged international, for Matondo and Sancho, that is just not enough.

The German model has worked for boys younger than that too, with the 16-year-old defender Matthew Bondswell turning down a scholarship and a professional deal at Nottingham Forest, and rejecting Premier League offers, for a place at RB Leipzig’s academy. He is playing for the under-17s this season and will move up to the under-19s later. Part of the attraction was a place at the international school affiliated to the club and the strong academic offering that goes with it.

Of course, City and the top Premier League academies can offer all that too, but they are not selling the dream quite like the Bundesliga has been able to do so on the back of Sancho’s success there. When he returns with Borussia Dortmund for their Champions League last-16 first leg against Spurs next month it will feel like a seminal moment for the development game.

For the players themselves, and for the German clubs who can offer them opportunity it is a good outcome. So too for the English Football Association and other Home Nations trying to develop a new generation of players. The reality amid this golden generation of junior British talent, created by heavy investment in the academy system, is that the even top clubs are now being dictated to by their best young players. At big Premier League academies contracts are going unsigned and value is walking out the door. It is hard not to think that at some point there will be a reaction.

One thing clear from Bielsa 'spy' case – he broke no rules

It is hard not to admire Marcelo Bielsa’s absolute determination to leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of the essential truth of his Championship opponents, even if that means watching Derby County play 51 times. There are some that might feel that is too high a price to pay for one’s own sanity although Bielsa would appear to put preparation above all else, judging by Wednesday’s insight into his methods, and that includes his own sanity.

If you have watched Derby 51 times there is every chance that you will have seen each formation and set-piece they have available. What Bielsa gets from his training-ground spying missions is not quite so clear. If anything it feels more like a compulsion. “I do it because I’m stupid,” he said.

Perhaps he has us all round his little finger. Perhaps his man with pliers and a change of clothes is already past the IT firewall at EFL’s head office and has sight of any planned charges. But as Bielsa keeps rightly pointing out about the spying: there is no rule against it.

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