First Guti said the lack of ‘canteranos’ – academy players – in the current Real Madrid side made him ‘sad’. Then Bernd Schuster weighed in, saying Jose Mourinho ‘is not interested’ in bringing players through to the first team.
On Thursday Marca splashed five payers who left Madrid’s academy and are now playing among the top sides in Europe – Juan Mata, Alvaro Negredo, Borja Valero, Roberto Soldado and Javi Garcia – on its cover while AS’s headline was ‘The Youth Team Works’, after Madrid beat Alcoayano 4-1 in the Copa del Rey with four Castilla players.
It all started with Mourinho playing Michael Essien at left-back instead of Castilla defender Nacho for the games against Celta Vigo, Borussia Dortmund and Mallorca. Injuries to Marcelo, Fabio Coentrao and Alvaro Arbeloa put the 22-year-old in the running but in the end the Portuguese went with the more experienced Essien, who did well against Celta and Mallorca but struggled against Dortmund as Madrid lost 2-1, with Iker Casillas admitting in a post-match interview that Madrid were exposed down their left hand side.
The Press were quick to criticise Mourinho’s team selection following the Dortmund game and asked a broader question: is the Portuguese reluctant to give academy players a chance?
Mourinho defended himself as ‘a champion of debutants’ but his record in promoting academy players throughout his career is not brilliant. Although three players in his Porto side that won the Champions League in 2004 were academy products – Vitor Baia, Ricardo Carvalho and Jorge Costa – they were all established players before Mourinho took over. The one youngster he did develop at Porto, Helder Postiga, was sold to Tottenham in 2003.
Not a single player from Chelsea’s academy became a regular fixture in Mourinho’s side in his three seasons at the club, while the only player he developed at Inter was Mario Balotelli.
A total of 16 academy players have made their first team debuts under Mourinho at Madrid, but only three – Antonio Adan, Nacho and Alvaro Morata – have played more than two games, and none are regulars.
However, Mourinho should not be blamed for the low number of academy products in the Madrid side – instead, the finger should be pointed at Florentino Perez. The Madrid President’s ‘galactico’ policy of signing the biggest names in the world has meant that talented youngsters like Mata, Negredo, Soldado, Valero, Garcia, Diego Lopez, Dani Parejo and Juanfran Torres were never given a chance in the first team and all of them had left the Bernabeu long before Mourinho had even been linked with the Madrid job.
In fact, Madrid’s inability to spot talent in their ranks even pre-dates Perez, with Coaches discarding a young Samuel Eto’o in the late 1990s.
There appears to be leadership problems at Madrid’s academy, which has had five different directors in the last nine years, while Barcelona’s productive La Masia has had just one. Whatever the reason, the current crop of youngsters Mourinho has to work with are hardly setting the world on fire. There are just two Madrid players in Spain’s Under-21 squad, in contrast to Barcelona’s six, while Nacho, who the media have been touting so much, cannot get into the starting line-up.
One possible future first-teamer is Jese, the top scorer in La Segunda who lit up the Under-19 European Championships last summer, but he has still some way to go before he can displace Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema or Gonzalo Higuain in Madrid’s attack.
The real reason why Mourinho is being criticised for this phenomenon is that some sections of the Madrid supporting Press, and the likes of Guti, who has supported the club all his life, dislike Mourinho in general. They believe his rude and at times aggressive manner flies in the face of the figure they believe the Madrid Coach should embody, a ‘senor del club’, and are using his attitude to academy players as another stick with which to beat him.
These same people fondly remember the days of the ‘Quinta del Buitre’ when Madrid won five consecutive League titles thanks to five homegrown players – Emilio Butragueno, Manolo Sanchis, Martin Vazquez, Michel and Miguel Pardeza, and look upon the current Barcelona side with envy.
While some may think Mourinho does not value the club’s tradition of bringing through homegrown players, he compensates for it with his record for winning matches and trophies. It is for that reason that the club are unlikely to call time on his reign in a hurry, regardless of how many players he promotes from Castilla.
