UK Edition
Inside the Portsmouth football factory that is producing the talent of tomorrow
There was a time when Portsmouth playing for a place in the last 16 of the FA Cup was a regular feature of football’s oldest cup competition. They reached at least the fourth-round stage every year from 2004 until 2010 – peaking with victory in 2008 – but what is most striking about their rebirth is how success is being achieved.
Long gone are the days of an extravagant recruitment policy that ended with administration and the real possibility of extinction. Instead, you now find a club being cited as an example for its development of young footballers and willingness to give them first-team playing time.
Portsmouth, Nottingham Forest and Crewe Alexandra were the three League clubs who gave the most starts last season to English under-21 players and, for manager Kenny Jackett, the benefits of his faith in younger players have become evident this season. As well as tonight’s FA Cup fourth-round replay against Queens Park Rangers, Portsmouth are in the semi-finals of the EFL Checkatrade Trophy and have spent much of the season leading League One.
The most exotic first-team import these days is Ronan Curtis, a 22-year-old forward who was signed from Derry City. The rest of the senior squad is British and, as last season’s stats underlined, largely English players in their late teens and early twenties. Jack Whatmough and Ben Close are regulars direct from a reinvigorated academy.
Recruiting good overseas talent becomes more challenging as you drop down the divisions, but Jackett has huge faith in the quality of young players being developed right the way through the English pyramid.
He has even found viable talent in non-league while a notable feature of last summer’s World Cup success in Russia was the depth of past experience outside the Premier League within the England squad. Twenty of the 23 players had either graduated through EFL academies, made their debuts beneath the top-flight or played on-loan in the EFL. “I don’t think football in this country has ever been stronger,” says Jackett, whose experience across a 45-year playing and managerial career spans every division. “There is a good British market for Portsmouth of players who are on their way up. Their age doesn’t worry me at all.
“If you have players with it all to prove, and the basis of your squad is like that, that is healthy. I’m not putting players in to be ready in two years. I have confidence in them now. They have enthusiasm, fitness and desire. Perhaps the downside is [a lack of] experience and decision-making.”
As part of their youth development week, the EFL have released statistics which show that 45 per cent of scholars from their academies do get a senior professional contract.
Aidy Boothroyd, the England Under-21 coach, believes that changes to the Checkatrade Trophy, which have allowed Premier League academies to play senior teams from the lower divisions, have also made a significant difference. “Senior football is a big difference from playing in the Under-21 league,” he says. “The EFL has also been a good place for players at Premier League clubs to go out and be tested in front of a crowd in games that count for the people they are playing against.
“We saw in the World Cup that you don’t have to come from a Premier League club to fulfil your dreams. It’s where you finish, not where you start. If there was a model for young players keeping going and having tenacity when they do have the knock-backs, that would be it. My experience now is that our players are as good technically, if not better, than any in the world.”
An increasing interest from abroad in young English players seems to support this belief. Another success story is Bury, who will play Portsmouth later this month in the Checkatrade semi-finals. EFL clubs have made £100 million in transfer fees over the last two years from players they have developed and for Bury, who have brought in £3.2m, it has been crucial to the club’s entire business plan. “We need to be where we are in the food chain,” says Lee Dykes, sporting director. “It’s not having to sell them but, when the valuation is met, we have to look at it candidly and assess whether the football club needs that finance at that particular time.” More than 20 academy players have made their Bury debuts in the last six years, with Ryan Cooney and Saul Shotton among those establishing themselves in the first-team last season.
David Wetherall, the former Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United defender, is the EFL’s head of youth development and knows the value of emerging through your local club. Wetherall believes that the overhaul of academies and the introduction of the Elite Player Performance Plan in 2012 has tangibly improved matters.
“There are a wide variety of pathways but every player needs that opportunity and, until then, you never really know what they are capable of,” he says. As they push for promotion from League One and League Two, Portsmouth and Bury are demonstrating that, with careful execution, a commitment to young players can positively enhance results.