Chelsea start scouting amateur players after ‘scary’ impact of Brexit on academy signings

Chelsea’s Cobham talent factory is the envy of the world.

The Blues’ list of academy graduates is formidable – from first teamers Mason Mount and Reece James to those who commanded huge fees and are now scooping trophies overseas like Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori. They recently overtook Arsenal and Manchester United to top the prestigious Training Ground Guru Academy productivity rankings for the first time.

For Jim Fraser, though, there are dark clouds on the horizon. Fraser is second in command at Chelsea’s academy and heads up youth recruitment. He is paid to anticipate the future.

“The competitive edge that we used to have is levelling off,” he admits over a fascinating half hour with i.

More from Football

Magda Eriksson: Emma Hayes has made Chelsea a family - and that's helping us in her absence22 October, 2022Jesse Marsch’s biggest problem at Leeds is one he can never solve – he is not Marcelo Bielsa22 October, 2022Man Utd's showdown Ronaldo talks, Conte identifies main Spurs flaw, Arsenal star's key change21 October, 2022

He points to the millions spent on academies at Liverpool and Leicester, among others, as evidence that the advantage they used to have in facilities is being eroded. The skill and breadth of their rivals’ scouting networks is catching up too.

The biggest elephant in the room for Premier League academies right now, though, is Brexit. Up until last year clubs could sign players from the EU at the age of 16. Now it is 18, signalling a profound shift that troubles Fraser.

Chelsea used to be among the most astute at picking up players from Europe so it’s no surprise that Fraser admits Brexit is “a little bit scary”.

“We’ve had to change everything,” he admits.

“A lot of our work [on scouting] would go on in Europe at the ages of 14 to 16 – Nathan Ake, Andreas Christensen and Jimi Tauriainen, who is in our under-19 group now, but that talent pool has just gone.

“We haven’t given up, we’re coming up with strategic and creative ways to bring talent in from 18 or above – obviously, look at Cesare Casadei who has come in from Inter in the summer. We want to bring the highest level of international talent into the academy but it doesn’t affect youth development in the same way when you’re bringing in a player at that age.”

Fraser believes the club’s policy of recruiting Europe’s best 16-year-olds lifted the levels for the domestic players in their academy, helping to fast-track improvement in the likes of Mount and James.

Mount is one of those who has benefitted from Chelsea’s multi-national academy (Photo: PA)

“I do have a concern at what teams at international level and of course our own teams are going to look like in years to come,” he says of the impact of Brexit.

“When you can bring in the best talent from overseas that gives everyone a lift but it is also a massive challenge to the group.

“The best players we might have from local and national areas between 9 and 16 are suddenly seeing three or four players come in internationally and the standards and levels of the players you’re working with is through the roof. Competition gets greater.

“We can’t do that anymore but our European competitors can. They are getting stronger but we’re not able to compete so that is a concern, personally, for what the game in our country is going to look like at youth level over the next five to 10 years.

“I know there’s a push back to the Premier League and the FA to maybe help change that and that elite players will be able to come back across at under-17. That’s something that’s a big, big passion of mine to help develop in that area because the challenge that Brexit has brought – not just to the football world but the whole country – is a little bit scary.”

Fraser, though, is far from despairing about the future. He believes Chelsea can steal a march on their competitors partly by being the first to fully embrace artificial intelligence in their scouting systems.

To that end the club has signed a five-year deal with tech company AiSCOUT to become their academy recruitment partner. The app – which is also in use at Burnley, Nottingham Forest and a clutch of EFL clubs – utilises artificial intelligence to discover, analyse and develop amateur talent.

It allows players who haven’t been spotted to upload footage of themselves carrying out a number of skill drills and then uses machine learning to assess it, pushing the most impressive players to the attention of Chelsea’s team of scouts.

“Predicting the future is always very, very tricky so you have to surround yourself with talented people. AiSCOUT are an incredibly talented group of people led by an incredible innovator,” Fraser says.

“The amount of times I’ve had a scout come to me and say ‘I’ve got just the player you need’ but he’s basically just describing the player and I can’t see him. There’s no footage but this changes that.

“We live in a world of social media, kids being on their phones all the time, and they’ve developed an app that allows kids to showcase themselves and can help us identify players quicker and get us back that competitive advantage again.”

More on Chelsea FC

Magda Eriksson: Emma Hayes has made Chelsea a family - and that's helping us in her absence22 October, 2022Premier League clubs want to change Brexit rules so they can sign under-18s from Europe21 October, 2022Alisson saves Liverpool, Almiron's wonderstrike, Chelsea get lucky - Premier League round-up19 October, 2022

AiSCOUT forms a sizeable part of the recruitment strategy in the club’s “Vision 2030” strategy, a wide-reaching programme of innovation and creativity intended to keep Chelsea’s academy top.

“We’ve got to creative. We can’t just say ‘We can’t do that, let’s not bother’, we’ve got to make sure we’re being very proactive and creative to bring new ways of bringing the best talent to Chelsea,” he said.

“We want to keep driving and pushing forward but we’ll keep doing what we can in the rules to make sure we’ve got the best players coming to Chelsea FC.”

This week they were training up their scouts to use the app. “It’s going to change people’s ways of doing things. It will take a bit of time, a bit of development but we hope we’re going to see some great results from it.

“People always want instant success. It’s not going to be that we use it next week and suddenly we’ve got 10 new players. But the potential is endless.”

Fraser also draws hope from the attitude of the manager and ownership consortium to the academy.

“They have been outstanding, to be honest, in the way they have spoken to Neil Bath and myself about how they want to continue to support the work that has been going on in the academy and of course be innovative in coming up with new ways this continues,” he says.

“They have been across AiSCOUT and understand the qualities that could bring. They’ve been very supportive about what we want to do to develop the academy to develop the football club in the long-term.”

Graham Potter was appointed with a remit to “join up” departments at Chelsea – and it is something he has done. “We’re so fortunate,” Fraser says.

“We’ve already had a number of meetings with Graham and his coaching and support team. It’s about collaboration and the ownership group talking about all departments working collaboratively. We’re not going to be successful on our own.

“We want to be the best academy of course but that’s to help the football club to be the best.

“Graham and his team see that as well. They’ve been so supportive already and want to help and give us everything they can.

“We’re going to work closely together but our job is to make sure we can affect our environment and the men’s team by bringing through the best talent we can.”

from Football | News and analysis from the Premier League and beyond | iNews https://ift.tt/qCfY49g