A star in the making?

It has been interesting to watch the first few friendlies that United have played in the run up to the start of the Premier League season, especially watching the play of Javier Hernandez since his debut against the MLS all stars two weeks ago. Hernandez joined the club officially in July 1st, although he was actually signed back in May. At the time of his signing the news flew under the radar, as most United supporters had never seen him play at Chivas Guadalajara his old club. From what I saw of him in his highlight reels he looked like a player. However I have to admit I've been very surprised at his ability to grasp the pace of the English league, and especially that of Manchester United.

Current club legend Paul Scholes recently mentioned that Hernandez looks like "an out-and-out goalscorer,'' the Mexican striker has been compared to former United great Ole Gunner Solskjaer. Scholes went on to add in the interview, "People say he's like Ole, and I thought that the first time I saw him in training. We did a finishing session and everything was in the bottom corner. He scores whenever he gets a chance. He comes on and looks lively. He's adapted to the pace of the game already". This among many other attributes maybe the one that defines how big of a star he can become at United.

For example when Cristiano Ronaldo joined United in 2003 it took him almost 3 years to blossom into the talent everyone knew he was. One of the things he always said slowed his development in England was truly learning and dealing with the sheer pace of an EPL game. At least during his first few run outs for the Red Devils "Chicharito", his nick name which means "little pea", looks like he already begun to feel right at home with the speed of the game. Of course whether or not he can keep this up during the regular season remains to be seen, but rest assured he has already convinced the most important person, Sir Alex Ferguson.

Hernandez really peaked the football world's attention at this summer's World Cup, where he score two goals and impressed with his creative play, pace and ability to run the channels and get behind defenders. When it came to his finishing in front of goal was superb. He will be a massive part of Mexico's youth push at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and in all likely hood will be Mexico's number 1 striker.

Again as I said above only time will tell if Chicharito will become a world star, but based on his World Cup and start at United, he's well on his way.

Cheers,
Mike

A long way to go for England's young players

The first half of 2010 has been up and down for the various levels of the England squad. This summer's latest venture to the World Cup produced another disappointing result as the senior team crashed out to a young rebuilding Germany squad. An up is the fact that the U-17 squad won the European Championship earlier this summer. However things were brought down a bit by England's U-19 team being handily beaten by Spain 3-1 in yesterday's U-19 European championships. Since the senior squad returned home from South Africa, many have begun to ask the question, why hasn't the relative success of the junior levels translated to the senior level?

Pundits and experts alike have pointed to the level of coaching, suggesting that the England youth set up is not developing the proper skills to compete on the senior level. Others have blamed the the lack of funds provided by the F.A to a national training center, like Clairefontaine in France or The national center in Germany. Only recently has the F.A been able to agree on building a proper one in England. There is no doubt that both these issues have a hand in the lack of senior success for England, but the key to this lies at the feet of the club teams, especially the Premier League clubs.

The last player census taken for the EPL indicated that just over 60% of the players in the league were foreign. This is in stark contrast to the EPL's continential rivals like Spain, Germany or Italy who were in the range of 25% and 40%. In the league of the newly crowned world champions the "unofficial" rule is that at least 60% of the squad composition must be of Spanish players. There is also a culture of promoting players from the youth academies to the first team on a consistent basis. These type of "unofficial" rules are not applied in the EPL, where the big four teams tend to field few English born players and treat their academies as player cash farms, where you grow players just to sell them for profit. Manchester United and Chelsea have long been accused of doing this and recently Liverpool has picked up the practice. At Arsenal Arsène Wenger consistently puts out starting 11's that contain not one single English player.

The arguments from some of the clubs is that young English talent does not measure up to foreign talent, and that they are in the business of winning and not necessarily improving the English national squad. The clubs say the F.A should be in charge of the development of youth players, but the F.A counters that the clubs should as they have more time with the players. This type of mentality from the club side has lead them to be dependant on buying foreign talent at the expense of young English academy players, and it is here where the disconnect between the junior and senior levels can be found.

At 18 youths can sign pro contracts but aside from the phenoms like Wayne Rooney, and Theo Walcott, most end up having to battle several mature foreign players just to see time with the first team. Danny Welbeck, Frank Nouble etc all could be good enough to see time with the first time had it not been for the purchase of foreign talent at their positions. This is not to say that all EPL clubs are practicing this, Everton, Tottenham and Aston Villa have been giving English talent a chance to develop with first team action, but at times this has been out of a cost cutting necessity more than anything.

If England wants to push quality talent on to the the senior level, they need to seriously look at how they can implement more English talent at the top flight. Germany has required that at least 12 players on a squad be "home grown" players and eligible to play for the German national team. The EPL is implementing a "home grown" player rule this year in which you must field 8 players that fit this label. However the rule has one massive loop hole, that home grown player does not have to be English. If the player has been trained in the club academy for over three years under the age of 21 they are considered home grown. For example Arsenal midfielder Cesc Fabregas who is Spanish counts as a home grown player; He has been training at Arsenal since he was 17. In all the rule will help the other clubs outside the big four bring up English players, but this still does not stop the club from filling out the rest of the 23 man roster with matured foreign players.

What club teams must come to understand is that the success of a domestic league will always depend on the strength of the domestic players. The EPL has been riding its luck on being able to attract foreign stars with the vast amount of money available to most clubs, but to be able to sustain itself long term the league must produce more English talent for the national teams. Or face a potential Spanish and German domination of Europe for a while to come.

Dan Roan wrote an excellent blog post about this for BBC Sport, and must read of England supporters.

Cheers,

Mike