Re the debate about City poaching players, offering youngsters and their families better schooling/accessories etc , there is an excellent article on the U23s /Academy on the OS . I've copied this bit about our scouting in Manchester and other areas , while we can't match City moneywise it looks like we are doing pretty good in attracting good young players from the Manchester area.
Still on the City theme, I saw that Lee Carsley tweeted his support before the derby match, now there is one ex player who I wish we could pinch from City , currently u18 Manager, maybe as our permanent Academy manager.
Martin Waldron, Everton’s Head of Academy Recruitment (pictured below with Tom Davies, Gethin Jones, Kieran Dowell and Callum Connolly), is charged with overseeing a team of scouts that has grown from “about a dozen” covering the north-west of England when he joined the Toffees 23 years ago to a network of 230. Within that, there are 64 ‘league co-ordinators’, one for each league in the Club’s catchment area and each with a team of scouts working under them. In the past two-and-a-half years, the national and international scouting network has expanded from nine scouts to 109 working across the UK and at all major international youth tournaments.
The goal, now achievable, is to scout every team of each of the 92 Football League clubs from Under-9 to Under-16 every season; effectively to know every single professional youth player in the country.
“We’re always looking at procedures and making sure everything is best in practice,” says Waldron. His team are currently creating a live ‘recruitment dashboard’ to track their work. “I want to sit there and be able to see the percentage of players we know going up every week at the touch of a button."
Paul Johnson has come in from Chelsea as Professional Recruitment manager, while Mark Curran recently joined from Manchester City to be the Greater Manchester Recruitment Officer.
“Manchester has become a hot bed for footballers and I think nearly every one of our age group has got six Manchester boys in it now,” says Waldron. “It used to be hard getting kids from Manchester but now if Everton come calling, you come because the reputation is very good. I’m convinced we’ve got the best Manchester boys here at Everton.”
It’s music to Sheedy’s ears. “If you don’t recruit good players at seven, eight and nine years old then it’s difficult for the coaches to turn them into the likes of Tom Davies. We’ve proved over the years that we can get players in and then proved that we can turn them into first-team players.”
And that is where Koeman comes in.
“You can have the best facility in the world and the most coaches but, at the end of the tunnel, if you don’t get the opportunity to play in our first team then you have no Academy,” says Unsworth. “We’ve got a manager here who wants to play the young kids and throw them in. That is priceless.
“We’ve seen other clubs who have quality, quality players but they never get an opportunity to play in the first team. Here they do and, if it doesn’t work out, then the next player is there banging on the door.”
Still on the City theme, I saw that Lee Carsley tweeted his support before the derby match, now there is one ex player who I wish we could pinch from City , currently u18 Manager, maybe as our permanent Academy manager.
Martin Waldron, Everton’s Head of Academy Recruitment (pictured below with Tom Davies, Gethin Jones, Kieran Dowell and Callum Connolly), is charged with overseeing a team of scouts that has grown from “about a dozen” covering the north-west of England when he joined the Toffees 23 years ago to a network of 230. Within that, there are 64 ‘league co-ordinators’, one for each league in the Club’s catchment area and each with a team of scouts working under them. In the past two-and-a-half years, the national and international scouting network has expanded from nine scouts to 109 working across the UK and at all major international youth tournaments.
The goal, now achievable, is to scout every team of each of the 92 Football League clubs from Under-9 to Under-16 every season; effectively to know every single professional youth player in the country.
“We’re always looking at procedures and making sure everything is best in practice,” says Waldron. His team are currently creating a live ‘recruitment dashboard’ to track their work. “I want to sit there and be able to see the percentage of players we know going up every week at the touch of a button."
Paul Johnson has come in from Chelsea as Professional Recruitment manager, while Mark Curran recently joined from Manchester City to be the Greater Manchester Recruitment Officer.
“Manchester has become a hot bed for footballers and I think nearly every one of our age group has got six Manchester boys in it now,” says Waldron. “It used to be hard getting kids from Manchester but now if Everton come calling, you come because the reputation is very good. I’m convinced we’ve got the best Manchester boys here at Everton.”
It’s music to Sheedy’s ears. “If you don’t recruit good players at seven, eight and nine years old then it’s difficult for the coaches to turn them into the likes of Tom Davies. We’ve proved over the years that we can get players in and then proved that we can turn them into first-team players.”
And that is where Koeman comes in.
“You can have the best facility in the world and the most coaches but, at the end of the tunnel, if you don’t get the opportunity to play in our first team then you have no Academy,” says Unsworth. “We’ve got a manager here who wants to play the young kids and throw them in. That is priceless.
“We’ve seen other clubs who have quality, quality players but they never get an opportunity to play in the first team. Here they do and, if it doesn’t work out, then the next player is there banging on the door.”
. Just love these guys ,the effort they put in and enjoy them for what they are , young Everton players, the trophies are a bonus, while also knowing that sadly even some of the very talented won't make it permanently to our first team. Wish I could see them live too, but you can form pretty reasonable opinions from the bits we get to see, international matches, etc - I've never seen that Messi fella, but think he's pretty good and at the other end of the scale I really like the look of the 17 year old Trevoh Chalobah of Chelsea having only seen him on tv about 4 or 5 times in the past year. Looking forward to Monday night now, and also happy to admit that a large part of looking forward to Sunday's game is for the involvement of our young players.
