Chelsea are fighting civil claims of "racially abusive behaviour", according to the Athletic, and have been taken to the High Court by former players who claim their experiences with the club in the 1980s and 1990s left them with long-term psychological damage.

The case relates to an independent inquiry which concluded Chelsea's former chief scout Gwyn Williams had subjected black youth-team players as young as 12 years old to racist abuse. 

The club issued a public apology at the time but did not reveal they were also defending claims who had been part of what Chelsea called "an environment where racially abusive behaviour became normalised".

Chelsea deny liability and argue the legal argument put forward should be directed at Williams himself – not them. The club's insurers have appointed Keoghs, which previously defended the Roman Catholic Church and Crewe Alexandre in their sexual-abuse scandals, to represent them. 

Williams, now in his early 70s, was said to have used a variety of derogatory remarks to Chelsea's young black players when he was the club's youth-team coach. 

The three-week trial, brought forward by four former footballers, is scheduled with the High Court in March 2022. One of them told the Athletic he had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of a "feral environment" where black players were "like a race of fucking dogs".
 

"People tend to look at us and tend to explain our relative success with our recruitment model. It is true that we have a good track record identifying undervalued players and selling them with a big profit, but that is just part of the story. I think our player development model is as important as recruitment. The young players we bring in are very rarely the finished developed package from day one, and we spend a lot of resources and money on developing those players once they enter the building.”

Rasmus Ankersen, co-director of football at Brentford FC, is fully aware that the Brentford story being told all over Britain - and probably all over Europe - is a story about using data in a different way to recruit players.

And, basically, he doesn't care how people explain the progress of the club - a club with one of the lowest revenues in the Championship - as long as the progress continues.

But when asked to explain the strategy behind the progress - many observers would say that they are punching above their weight - he feels that all the people working with player development at the club, in particularly at the B-team, deserves some credit for their hard work.

"The B-team is a vital component of our progress over the past few years. The way we organize ourselves in terms of player development is quite different to the traditional academy model.”

The summer of 2016 saw Brentford taking a significant step towards finally generating some return on the £2 million investment they made every year in the academy.

95 per cent will never survive

"Using investment language you could say that we went from working as a seed investor to a late-stage investor. From investing money in very unmatured talent, players as young as seven, to suddenly not recruiting anyone under the age of 17. If you are a seed investor, you know perfectly well that when you invest money in early stage start-ups, most likely 90 or 95 per cent of those companies will never survive.

"And, basically, you can apply that way of thinking to young footballers when they become part of academies all over the country. The vast majority of them won’t play in your first team and therefore won’t generate a return on investment. The one or two players that get through the eye of the needle will need to pay for investment you’ve made in everyone else," he explains.

According to Ankersen, Brentford were in a difficult position because, even though their academy did a decent job in developing players, quite often the most valuable players - or assets - left the club when they turned 17, leaving Brentford almost empty-handed.

"We were competing against the likes of Manchester City, who probably spend more on just youth scouting in London than we did on running our academy. Put on top of that our geographical location with big club neighbours like Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal. So, we were in a difficult position and we felt we had to do something different to be able to compete. Looking at different opportunities, we ended up with the decision to close our academy and create a B-team structure instead.

"That’s where we moved to become a late-stage investor recruiting more mature players at age 17 or 18. The idea is that when you invest in a 17 year old player you pay more for him than when he was 7 years old, but it is justified by the fact that you also have a lot more certainty that he will have a successful career. Looking back at the last three years we are very pleased with that decision," reflects Ankersen.

No reason to hide that

Looking at the numbers, Brentford used to spend £2 million a year on running the academy - now they spend £1-1.5 million on their B-team instead. Since the start of the summer of 2016, 16 members of the B-team have made their debut on the first team.

"When you do elite youth development there are mainly two ways to measure success. Are you developing players to play in your first team? And can you sell the players you develop with a profit? At the end of the day talent development is a business, and like in any other business you want a return on your investment.”

“When we closed our academy we got a lot of criticism for thinking about it as a business because it involved young people. I acknowledge that an academy can serve other purposes, for example to play a role in the community, but an academy is also a business, and there is no reason to hide that. At Brentford FC we have a very successful community trust that makes a huge difference within the community. That’s not a business, but an elite academy is.”

He explains that to create a B-team was just part of the strategy implemented four years ago by Brentford FC, who are currently in fourth position in the Championship and pushing for promotion - presumably via the play-offs as WBA in second place are ten points ahead.

We wanted to break with that model

"In the traditional English club model there is a manager in charge of pretty much both short term and long term decisions at the club. We don’t think that’s particularly good for player development because a manager on average has his job for 14-16 months. If that’s your average life span, how far are you going to think ahead? Probably until next Saturday. Are you going to take a risk playing a young prospect rather than buying an experienced player even though that might be the right decision for the club in the medium to long term? Probably not.“

That is why Brentford have a first-team coach, not a manager, and the responsibility of the B-team is on the shoulders of the two sporting directors.

“At Brentford we wanted to break with that model and therefore we don’t have have a manager, but a head coach. His job is to win the games on Saturday, and he needs to be very good at that, but he is not in charge of recruitment and the academy model at the club. That responsibility sits with myself and Phil Giles, and our job is first and foremost to secure that Brentford is successful not only this season but also in five and 10 years.”

“The same goes for player development. You want to take a long term view on that too. When you buy a player, how do you want him to develop? What kind of player do you want him to be in 1-2 years? It is very difficult for the head coach to take such a long term view on players because the main part of his job is to win on Saturday, and that’s one of the main reasons why we decided a few years ago to appoint an individual development coach who basically has one job and that is to focus on developing our 6-7 biggest player assets.”

A first team without being a first team

“The individual development coach is one example of how we have tried to build a structure around player development that fits our business model. The core of our business is to make a profit every year on player trading so we need not only to be able to find players with potential, but also to increase their value by developing them while they are in the building.”

A key part of Brentford’s player development model is their investment into the B-team which travels all over Europe to play some of the top teams on the continent.

"Our B-team is the closest you get to a first team without being a first team. The number of staff and specialists that help these players develop matches what you see in many first team environments”, says Ankersen.

The recruitment at the B-team focuses primarily on two type of players: rejects from the UK and top talents from overseas.

“When we recruit players at the age of 17 or 18 years old it is difficult to attract the best English talent, so instead we are focusing on picking up some of those players who have been released by the big clubs or don’t see a pathway to the first team there. One example is Paris Maghoma who we recruited from Tottenham some months back. We believe he is a player with lots of potential, but making it into Tottenhams first team is very difficult.

"In that way I actually think our B-team is playing an important role for the whole eco-system of youth development because we pick up some of those talented players who are late bloomers or who has got stuck at a big club.”

Diverse games programme

“Our second focus in terms of recruitment is small and medium sized countries within Europe. Here, we have a very good story to tell to some of the most talented players. Brentford can be their pathway to the Championship or even Premier League. At the moment we have players like Jan Zamburek and Mads Roerslev who started playing for the B-team but have now broken into the first team. They are both youth internationals for Czech Republic and Denmark.”

Ankersen says that basically what they try to do is to differentiate their product.

“If you are a company in any other industry you need to think about how you can be different and how you make your product unique. The B-team model is our answer to that”

Brentford's B-team play matches against reserve teams from all over the country, and quite often they also travel to the Continent to play reserve teams from clubs like AC Milan and Bayern Munich. Ankersen believes that playing against continental teams will develop the players because they constantly need to adapt to new and varied opponents.

"If you are a player in a category 2 academy in England you pretty much only play against other category 2 players in the same age group. We don’t believe that’s the best way of developing players. The key for us is to create a diverse games programme where you play against many different styles of football and different age groups. They might play a classy midfielder from Bayern Munich one day, and a few days later they will play a team in the London Middlesex Cup - where they play semi-professionals on lousy pitches.”

Proximity of role models

Another thing which is very different at Brentford FC is the way they mingle the first team and the B-team. Most clubs "protect" the first-team players by creating an environment in which they are relatively isolated - but Brentford do it very differently.

"Some years back I went to Kenya to study why a small town there produce the worlds best marathon runners, and what I saw was that the young talents every day trained alongside some of the biggest stars in the world. I mean, if you run 10 strides behind the guy who won the world championship last year there is a good chance you think: “If he can do it, why can’t I?”.

That proximity of role models is very powerful in a talent environment, but unfortunately in football we are very busy separating our first team players from everyone else because we want to remove all distractions. They almost never see each other, and we tried to change that with the B-team. The B-team players are around the first team players all day long. They eat together, they are in the gym together, and it helps creates belief among the B-team players because after a while they realise that the first team players are just human like themselves. I guess you could say that proximity helps demystify what it takes to become really good," says Ankersen.

Parents of athletes hoping to turn professional have been left short-changed of close to $250,000, according to Australian news site 9News, after Barcelona closed two of their academies in Sydney and Brisbane due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Australia's Office of Fair Trading and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission have asked families to make a complaint so they can investigate the matter.

The report comes after Barcelona earlier this month closed five of their Canadian academies leading to families of the intended participants suing the club, claiming they had been cheated of more than $200,000. 

One mother, Bebe Monaghan, said she had saved up for a year and refinanced her home to make her son's dream come true. She said she lost $28,000.

"I sort of keep thinking this isn't real, this is a huge company, a huge football company with millions in profit, this can't really be happening," she told 9News.

Barcelona last season recorded a turnover of €852.2 million, the highest in world football, and a pre-tax profit of €3.6 million. In total, 70 families estimate they are owed around $350,000.

Barca Academy, in charge of operating the sites, blamed the coronavirus for the closure. According to the report, however, the firm was already struggling financially before the crisis and owed thousands of dollars in rent. It was only paid after several demand notices were brought forward.

Local club Brisbane Roar have said they would offer every player a free season of training with their academy.  

Barcelona have closed five of their Canadian academies after the club's local partner in charge of the operations, BCN Sports, filed for bankruptcy, according to Spanish publication Palco23.

The move has led to some families of the academies' attendants to file a lawsuit seeking refunds for the programmes they had otherwise paid to attend. 

The suit claims more than 75 families have been affected by the cancellations and that they have been "cheated" of more than $200,000. 

They also claim BCN Sports prior to filing for bankruptcy due to the coronavirus pandemic had changed its terms and conditions to ensure it would not have to issue refunds for its cancelled programmes. 

Barcelona had been in preparations to open a sixth academy in the country, but those plans have now also been cancelled.

The Spanish club have more than 50 academies worldwide, but this is the first time they have had to tone down their international expansion. 

Bristol City will continue to buy and develop young talents, according to the club's chairman, Jon Lansdown, who explained the club's transfer strategy in a recent interview with City's official podcast.

Lansdown was speaking as City are rapidly growing their business. The club have recently revealed revised plans for a £100 million sports and convention centre next to their stadium. Those plans will further support the club's growing commercial income, which reached £14.5 million last year, supporting a fourfold increase in turnover over the past five seasons to £30.3 million.

"We like to produce our own players if we can, and if not, then we look to try and buy young players and develop them. Obviously, it's a blend and balance, but if you're saying what does Bristol City do and what doesn't it do, as a Bristolian, you'd want to watch 11 Bristolians playing for Bristol City at the highest level.

"And how can you make the academy as good as it can be, and the facilities as good as it can be, to enable as much of that as possible? That's the utopia that is probably unachievable, but how do you work back from that and get something close to it?" he pondered. 

Lansdown also spoke out on his relationship with the club's head coach, Lee Johnson.

"Between me, Mark Ashton [the club's chief executive] and Lee, we're in regular contact. Of course, you need sounding boards off as many different people as possible. I'm not going to claim to be the football expert, but at the same time he's [Lee Johnson] very open-minded in terms of he's always looking to learn and get other people's opinions."
 

Liverpool's under-23s coach, Neil Critchley, has left the club to take charge of League One side Blackpool, following a six-and-a-half-year stint with the Merseyside club.

Critchley joined Liverpool in September 2013, initially as the under-18s coach before moving to his now former position with the club.

This year saw the Englishman take charge of the first team for two matches - one against Aston Villa in the Carabao Cup and the other against Shrewsbury in the FA Cup, though the teams he led mainly consisted of players from the club's youth ranks.

Academy director at Liverpool, Alex Inglethorpe, said he had mixed emotions about Critchley's departure.

"It's a bittersweet day in many respects. Obviously losing a person and professional of Neil's calibre is something that is a disappointment, but at the same time we have great excitement and joy that he has been given this wonderful opportunity," he said.

"We see this as a reflection on the academy as a whole, that it's an environment where players and coaches have a pathway to progression and self-improvement."

Before making a permanent appointment, existing coaching staff at the club will lead the under-23s. 
 

Research by offthepitch.com shows that English league clubs face an academy recruitment crisis under Brexit, with up to 75 per cent of Irish footballers prevented from entering English league clubs before the age of 18, cutting off one of the game’s most potent sources of talent.

Ireland is the leading source of non-English players across all four divisions, but under FIFA rules English clubs will not be allowed to recruit non-EU players under the age of 18 when the Brexit transition period ends in December.

Earlier this month the FA of Ireland (FAI) acting deputy CEO Niall Quinn said that he was in the dark as to whether an exemption would be granted to young Irish players because of the historical links between the two islands. FIFA is understood to be reluctant to grant special treatment to young Irish players because of the precedent it might set.

“There is nothing certain about Brexit as we know,” said Quinn.

FIFA’s first circular on Amendments to the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players after Brexit, published on 13 February, made reference to the transfer of minors, but only in the context of humanitarian and academic factors. Brexit was not mentioned.

“Calamitous consequences”

Our research shows that under these restrictions 55 per cent of the Irish players currently with EPL clubs and 40 per cent of those in the Championship would not have been able to follow their career path starting out at English club academies as minors. When players who are able to claim dual British and Irish citizenship are taken out of the equation, this figure rises to 75 per cent.

One senior English academy figure has said that the new restrictions will “significantly impact in the most calamitous manner” how they are able to do their business.

According to correspondence leaked to the Irish website, the42.ie, the official described his club as “disenchanted” with the moves and said that “the football industry will undoubtedly have to change its recruitment strategy with regards to young players”.

Ireland has traditionally been a hotbed of talent for English football, with clubs acquiring the country’s best young talent as teenagers and putting them through their academies, or, in the past YTS schemes or on their ground staff. Players such as Johnny Giles, Liam Brady, Niall Quinn and Robbie Keane have followed this route.

I’ve seen too much heartache in the meantime of young players going over without education.

“From the beginnings of professional football in Britain, Ireland was a source of players because of their quality, cost and perceived ability to assimilate. It was also because there was an established Irish League and Irish Cup competition from the 1880s,” Michael Walker, author of Green Shoots: Irish Football Histories, explained to offthepitch.com.

“It was natural for English and Scottish clubs to look west towards Ireland rather than east to Europe. It remained that way, largely, until the 1980s. The fall of the Berlin Wall changed European history and British football and subsequent globalization made it much harder for Irish boys to compete, particularly in England’s Premier League clubs.”

Hotbed of talent

Walker points to a “drop in the quality of Irish players, north and south of the border” over the past three decades, with Roy Keane and Damien Duff being the last Irish players to stand out at the top level of European club football.

Nevertheless, in proportion to the country’s population, Ireland has more players in the Premier League than England (1 player per 236,969 head of population v 1 player per 294,444 in England), but recruitment of young Irish players tends to come in bursts and is often linked to a manager with strong Irish links. For example, the career origins of several current Irish players in the Premier League and Championship date back to the managerial tenures of Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane at Aston Villa and Sunderland.

Others have come in later, having been scouted from the League of Ireland. Players to have made that leap include the Everton captain Seamus Coleman, who the Blues signed for £60,000 from Sligo Rovers, and Keane, who joined Nottingham Forest as a 19 year old from Cobh Ramblers in 1990. These success stories, nevertheless tend to be the exception and most Irish players start out as teenagers in England.

Quinn nevertheless said that he would “welcome” restrictions on young players from making the same journey he did, when he left Dublin in the early-1980s to join Arsenal at the age of 16. He spoke of being “robbed” of his education, having left school early to make his way as a professional player, and of his regrets at having to do so.

“I’ve seen too much heartache in the meantime of young players going over without education,” added Quinn. “Some got playing again in League of Ireland and football stayed as the staple of their being. But for others, I’ve seen people annoyed by the game and the problems that it caused them.”

No body of evidence

Gareth Farrelly, a former Ireland international teammate of Quinn who now works as a lawyer, told offthepitch.com that the move to England was “always a choice” and was never enforced upon young players. He left Dublin aged 17 in the mid-1990s to join Aston Villa as a professional, before later playing for Everton and Bolton Wanderers.

“Obviously from a developmental point of view, it was always advised that you went at scholarship age [16] or when I went [17],” he says, adding there is no “body of evidence that demonstrates going across at 18 makes it better.”

“It's one of the comments that people make loosely about how the better educated you are and grounded you are, the more likely you're going to be successful. Now, that may be true, but again, we don't have a metric to compare that to, he says.

Quinn and others understand that the motivation to cross the water to play for Liverpool or Arsenal will always be the dream – the images of Keane, George Best, John Gles and Liam Brady endure.

“I mean, is that young player going to get the same level of training, coaching, resources, infrastructure at home [in Ireland[ that he would get in the UK? I'm always wary of statements that aren't really backed up by anything.”

Farrelly, who in his tenure as Bohemians manager in the noughties built up strong ties with one of Ireland’s most productive junior clubs, Belvedere – which has produced more than 10 international players and scores of professionals – acknowledges that there are discernible benefits for young players staying within the League of Ireland instead of playing youth football in England.

“It offers grown up, adult, competitive football, which I think is different,” he says, adding that “the percentages are still low” for those who progress from academy standard in England.

FAI New order

One of the challenges facing Quinn and the new FAI administration, who have taken over a crisis hit organisation teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, will be building up a suitable youth development network within the League of Ireland that will support the country’s outstanding young players. Many of Ireland’s most productive clubs in terms of youth development, such as Belvedere, St Kevin’s and Home Farm, have opted to stay out of the league structure.

Farrelly says there are simple changes that could be made within the FAI to help develop young players, whether they are able to travel to England or not. A player development department within the FAI would, he says, “offer them different support at different stages [while] not looking to tread on the toes of the big clubs over there [in England].”

He adds that it could be utilised to monitor fitness, development for underage national teams and help in personal development, providing “a link and a voice” between all the aspects that are important in a teenage player’s development: family, friends, development, education, injury management. All this would benefit Ireland’s national team, but also the English clubs where they typically play.

The former player points to Ireland’s current under-21 team as evidence that talent is being produced, but says that the problem more recently has been nurturing young talent so that players perform at the summit of the game.

Greater safety net exists

“Niall Quinn and others think boosting the domestic League of Ireland is a way to retain teenage boys and sustain their presence in the game longer,” says Walker.

“Quinn and others understand that the motivation to cross the water to play for Liverpool or Arsenal will always be the dream – the images of Keane, George Best, John Gles and Liam Brady endure. But there is a growing desire to ensure a greater safety net exists – and that there can be a fulfilling career in Irish semi-professional football.”

Walker sees political changes working in favour of a stronger football structure in Ireland. Earlier this month, Sinn Finn – traditionally seen as the political wing of the IRA but now considered a modern nationalist party – won the largest share of the vote in Ireland’s general election. It is considered the biggest step towards a united Ireland in almost a century.

“Over the next 10-20 years the move to Irish re-unification politically will almost certainly see a re-unified Irish League,” he says.  “This will mean better infrastructure, commercial revenue and increased pathways to an Irish football career in Ireland.”

Barcelona have announced they are opening their second high-performance academy in the US, which will be spread over three campuses in Miami, Florida.

The opening of Barcelona Academy PRO Miami, as it is called, follows the opening of a similar site on New York's Long Island last year, supporting a global growth strategy of spreading the Barcelona brand.

Europe's top football clubs are fighting an increasingly competitive battle for American market share, with several teams recently making major moves. Atletico Madrid are funding the creation of a football club in Canada, Liverpool have already established an academy in the US, and just last week PSG announced they were opening another academy in the country, also in Miami.

Before opening in August this year, a series of smaller Barcelona camps will be held at Barry University, Amelia Park and Kendall Soccer Park, respectively.

There are 53 Barcelona academy programmes worldwide and with 11 on its soil, the US is home to more of them than any other country. There are 25 in total in the Americas: Canada has five, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil have two each, and Guatemala, Peru and the Dominican Republic are home to one each. 

ISL, a global sports management and marketing agency, manages many of the club's North American academies and claims to have grown participation in the club's US academies by 1,470 per cent.
 

Manchester United's chief executive, Ed Woodward, has defended the club's transfer strategy after a period of heavy criticism from fans and pundits alike over failure to convert player recruitments and business progress into on-the-pitch results.

Speaking at the quarterly Fans' Forum held at Old Trafford, Woodward said that "there has been no shortage of investment in players over the past few years" - a reference to the £200 million spent on player recruitments since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer became the manager in December 2018.

"Our recruitment process focuses on analysis and selection of players over the course of a season, with a view to the following summer transfer window. As part of the rebuild, we see this coming summer as an important opportunity," he said, adding that it is the "overwhelming priority" to get the club back to competing for the Premier League and Champions League titles on a regular basis.

Infrastructure investments

While sporting results have not been in United's favour the past one and a half years, one thing that has brought some joy to both fans and people associated with the club is the emergence of academy players such as Brandon Williams and Scott McTominay under Solskjaer. Woodward said that "significant work" and investments had been made to strengthen the academy.

"We're pleased with the progress being made behind the scenes to ensure we have the right players, the right infrastructure, and the right culture to sustain long-term success," he said, adding that "extensive work" had been done to the club's recruitment process and considerable investment in scouting, data and analytics made.

"The recruitment department is working to a clear plan and philosophy, along with Ole and his coaching staff. Our focus is on bringing in a combination of experience and the best young players with potential to develop further, fusing graduates from our academy with high-quality acquisitions."

The chief executive, having been heavily criticised for being too commercially oriented, also said that "the commercial elements of the club are geared to ensuring we have a self-sustaining model which supports investment in the playing side."

According to the Daily Mail, United have approached local authorities to request permission to install rail seating at Old Trafford, which could potentially be put in place as soon as this season. 

Rangers have partnered with Malaysian club Raisuri Warriors as they continue to increase their presence in the contested region 

Asia is an increasingly important market, especially in terms of commercial opportunities, but potentially uncovering the next big talent has also seen many football clubs make heavy investments across the world's most populous area.

Rangers have already partnered with three clubs based in India, Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively.

Head of soccer schools and international relations at Rangers, Gary Gibson, said the agreement was "another sign of the club's continued progression in Asia through collaboration with football organisations that are eager to develop their club, coaches and players."

Coaches from the Scottish club will travel to Malaysia and provide coaching sessions, while players from Raisuri Warriors will travel to Glasgow to experience football at the club's facilities. 

Stepping up their pursuit of Celtic, in recent years Rangers have been improving their commercial income, which stood at £6.8 million in the 2018/19 season, but they are still some way behind their Scottish rivals, who generated commercial income of £18.1 million over the same period.