oli's spot
#1 The Never Ending Quest for the Next Big Thing
Just before the transfer window slammed shut our talent spotting expert Editor snapped up some up and coming talent, recruiting Vibe Football blogger Oli Trussler Jones. And it seems fitting that our bright new thing should launch his ATFV career by looking at the Academy at Landore and its promising summer business………..
It has been an exciting summer transfer window for Swansea City supporters.
While a large number of key players departed the club, some exciting talent arrived in South Wales.
It is a little known statistic that four of Swansea’s summer signings have experience in the Champions League or Europa League. Olivier Ntcham and Rhys Williams have played in the Champions League while Joel Piroe and Ethan Laird have experience in UEFA’s Secondary Competition.
While depth and quality has been added to the first team, Swansea’s recruitment team have also brought in exciting young talent from around the country into the academy system.
Despite being downgraded from a Category 1 Academy to Category 2 status, Swansea’s Landore Academy is still well respected around the country.
With alumni such as Connor Roberts, Joe Allen and Ben Davies, Swansea City has established itself as a club that promotes talent from the surrounding area.
For many fans there is nothing more exciting than seeing a local lad come good and this has been a regular occurrence at the Swansea.com stadium.
However, for the academy in recent years there has been a new direction in the never ending quest for the ‘next big thing’ through the club’s doors. This summer more than ever Swansea have focused on bringing in talent released by some of the country’s biggest clubs.
While Dan James and Oli Mcburnie had previously been brought in from elsewhere and gone on to succeed, Swansea have based the success of the academy around the locality producing footballers good enough to break through.
Following on from the success of Brentford with their ‘B’ team model (more on that later,) key figures at the Landore training base have seemingly decided to emulate that model.
Lincoln Mcfayden was the first man to arrive at the club this summer and he has already made a number of appearances for the first team.
Nico Defreitas-Hansen, a US youth international goalkeeper has also arrived and been named in the Matchday squad.
Others such as Tyrelle Whittaker and Azeem Abdulai have arrived from Tottenham and Leicester respectively and featured for the U23 side.
The biggest clubs often stockpile the best talent but there is a line that must be drawn as to how many players clubs have on their books.
As such, talented players like those I’ve just mentioned above are let go by the elite clubs and are ripe for an Academy like Swansea City’s to develop.
The Brentford model that Swansea will be hoping to emulate is one that has yielded the Bees considerable success. They sign players released by top clubs for the most minor areas of weakness within their game. Academies at Top Clubs are obsessed with looking for ‘The Perfect Footballer’ and actually end up releasing near perfect footballers for other teams to develop.
Players like Sam Leverett and Adrian Akande have been let go by Premier League sides but arrive at Swansea ready to fine tune areas of their game.
Akande especially was once coined ‘The Next Hazard’ and is a talent that excites many Swansea fans. Aficionados of the Chelsea youth setup saw the decision to let Akande leave as curious and Swansea will be hoping he goes on to prove that.
The overhaul that the U23 setup has undergone is not just confined to the pitch, with Kris O’Leary taking charge in the dugout in the closing stages of the 20/21 season.
O’Leary replaced Jon Grey who had experienced a slow start to life as U23 manager and has now taken up a different role at the club – ironically enough stepping up to become Academy Manager.
O’Leary has allowed a key player from last season in Ali Al-Hamadi to depart in favour of an overhaul using this new system of recruitment.
If Swansea are able to forge the right balance of local talent and players brought in from elsewhere, this could be an exciting generation for the club’s youth setup.
In 5 years time Swansea fans could quite conceivably see players like Adrian Akande, Sam Leverett and Kieran Petrie forming the core of the side.
Whether it is at Swansea or elsewhere the development of young players is important financially and on the pitch.
Despite the arrivals of players from elsewhere, South Wales is still proving to be fertile ground for young and talented footballers.
Porthcawl native Brandon Cooper has broken through in the early parts of this season; Cameron Evans is excelling at Waterford on loan; and 16 year old Ben Lloyd burst onto the scene, scoring on his first team debut.
Academy players being sold for a profit has been a key part of Swansea’s business plan and this steady stream of revenue looks set to continue into the future.
