England manager Gareth Southgate believes his former club Crystal Palace can avoid losing south London’s most talented young footballers to rival clubs after opening a new £20 million academy.
Southgate, 51, came through Palace’s academy before going on to make more than 100 appearances for the first-team, but revealed that they used to feel “inferior” to clubs such as Arsenal and Tottenham when they travelled to their facilities.
South London is often hailed as a hotbed of young talent but in recent years that has been hoovered up by the other London clubs who have been able to offer training facilities far superior to Palace’s.
“Whenever we travelled to Highbury or to Tottenham, we did feel a bit inferior,” Southgate said, before using a pair of giant scissors to cut the ribbon to officially open the new facility in Beckenham, a stone’s throw from Palace’s first-team training ground. “We didn’t necessarily have that investment in us. We didn’t necessarily feel that we could match those teams.
“We could in a different way, and we have some incredible qualities which the environment we had gave us, and the people that were here gave us. Now you’ve got a chance to do both. One of your barriers to recruitment – you’ve got one of the best catchment areas in the country – but if you can’t match the facilities of some of the clubs that nearby then that is going to be a barrier to recruitment.
“One of those differences now has changed. Young players when they come here will feel just as special as they feel at any other club in the Premier League because your facilities are going to match that. The onus now is on everybody to bring it alive.”
Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira echoed that sentiment. “Having a facility like this will allow us to fight more with the teams around us and to convince young players around this area to stay around this area,” he said.
“When you bring a young player here and let him visit a facility like this, which has everything that will allow a young player to develop and become a Crystal palace player, a Premier League player, we’ll have the tools to have this ambition, to bring those best young players from the areas through.”
The majority of young players — the youngest can officially register at Palace’s academy aged eight — who pass through the centre’s doors will still, however, not make it professionally. And Steve Parish, the Crystal Palace chairman, said it was important that the new facility prepared teenagers for life outside of football.
“This place isn’t just about football,” Parish said. “We teach young people how to deal with not just success but failure. It’s important life lessons. Maybe your future isn’t as a footballer, a coach, but maybe a lawyer, a club secretary. They find their thing and when they look back on their time in this place, they think: ‘Maybe I didn’t make it as a professional footballer but I’m pleased I went there.’ This will touch a vast number of lives in south London. This club is South London and proud, and I couldn’t be more proud.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3Brtht0
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