Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. The best way to follow his journey is by subscribing here.
Aidan Callan remembers the first time he saw Matus Holicek play. Holicek was nine years old and had recently been signed to Crewe Alexandra’s academy. Callan recalls how technical his game was, even that young. Not all the ones who stick out at that age make it, but Holicek had a better chance than most.
Fast forward a decade and Holicek is now 20 and a firm fixture in Crewe’s team.
He has international recognition at Under-19 level, has become more of a central attacking midfielder than wide player and has assisted five league goals this season. Last month he signed an extension to his first professional contract. They want to keep him here and his deal was running out this summer.
Crewe Alexandra produce a lot of academy talent. The 12 used in the first team this season is three more than any other team in League Two.
But Holicek is particularly interesting because he represents a new wave of scouting and recruitment that Crewe believe gives them a distinct competitive advantage. The clue is in the combination of Slovakian name and the wonderfully broad Cheshire accent.
Crewe has long had a heritage as a welcome home for migrants from Eastern Europe. Following the end of the Second World War, 160,00 Polish refugees settled in Britain and the largest resettlement camp was built at Doddington Hall to the south of the town.
After the eastern expansion of the European Union in May 2004, it was possible for migrants from multiple nations to relocate to the UK and Crewe became one of the hotspots.
A BBC news report in 2006 said that 6,000 Polish workers alone were living in Crewe, although other studies thought that too high. The 2021 census calculated that 2.1 per cent – a far lower number – of Cheshire East’s population was from Poland or Romania, with Slovakia also a contributor. Still, the community clearly exists.
That migrant population is significant enough that Crewe Alexandra understand the importance of trying to embrace them within the family of a football club that literally exists at the centre of the community.
Social media posts are occasionally published in Polish or Slovak inviting participation in ticket offers. To state the obvious: the language is a barrier but football has no language.
On the Saturday I go to the Mornflake Stadium (although it will always be Gresty Road to me), a family waits at the back of the massive Main Stand: father, mother, young son.
This isn’t the first game that they have been to here, but they only come infrequently. They are buying tickets on the day for Newport County at home, so they’re only a few steps from being hopelessly addicted.
But it’s in the academy that the most fascinating impacts of Crewe’s multiculturalism are being seen.
It makes complete sense in a world where clubs are continually looking to outsmart each other and seeking a competitive advantage. You have a large migrant population who have largely arrived from countries with a football tradition. So you try to tap into it.
“We have an opportunity here – we know that,” says Callan. “We have a new head of recruitment from a different part of the country, and he wants to learn about the local population and how it is evolving.
Crewe Alexandra 0-3 Newport County (Saturday
- Game no.: 65/92
- Miles: 130
- Cumulative miles: 11,122
- Total goals seen: 191
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: The view from the Main Stand in Crewe. On a clear day, I reckon you have a wider vista of England’s lands than from anywhere else in the 92.
“This is a unique chance to tap into what is happening in the local area and bring through a few more Matus Holiceks. This is a multicultural world and that is brilliant. Different cultures add to day-to-day life, but it can also have an impact on football.”
Crewe is an ideal place for this type of movement. It’s a small town and those within the grassroots game and school sport system tend to know each other. As well as scouts that watch games, the club is repeatedly receiving recommendations.
Twelve years ago, one of those recommendations was about a six-year-old named Mikolaj Lenarcik. He was a pupil at a primary school in Crewe, was very shy and could barely speak any English.
He was also a promising outfield player who was eventually turned into a goalkeeper in Crewe’s academy. Lenarcik was on the first-team bench at 17 and, this season, saved two penalties in a shootout win in the FA Youth Cup. He is another that they are very proud of here.
Clearly this is a no-brainer in a practical sense: you have children who may have talent so clearly you break down barriers as much as possible to explore the potential.
But what I find particularly interesting is how these young players differ from those around them. When Callan first saw Holicek, it was the way he protected the ball and surged forward with it that made him different. Even as children, there are stylistic trends in those from different backgrounds.
“Because of that, it’s not just about the individuals themselves, but about how they impact upon the other academy kids around them to create rounded players,” says Callan.
“We take boys over to Cyprus and Barcelona to experience different styles of football. But if that is happening on a daily basis here, players learning from others with slightly different styles, that’s only going to help.”
This is an emphatically long-term project: Holicek was one of the first to develop because his talent was immediately obvious and the timings of his move to the UK fell into place. It is also a game of miniscule percentages: there is not suddenly going to be half a team of eastern European surnames in a Crewe academy side.
But Crewe can be hopeful that this symbiosis becomes fruitful and self-fulfilling.
“The ideal is that this goes hand in hand,” says Callan.
“We know that there is a significant eastern European population around Crewe and south Cheshire.
“If you start to bring through players from those backgrounds, it seems inevitable that local communities within that population are going to be more interested in following that journey and the younger generations of those families will be interested in playing football.”
Which creates unity through football, a natural integration within a diverse multicultural population.
Amid the scare stories from bad-faith actors who seek to cause division, there’s something warming about all this. Matus Holicek, he’s one of Crewe’s own.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
from Football - The i Paper https://ift.tt/S0ICnx2
Post a Comment
EmoticonClick to see the code!
To insert emoticon you must added at least one space before the code.