With a club as big and successful as Bayern, youth development often gets overlooked, but is there a system in place to develop quality youth players at the Bavarian club?
The last part in the series of articles illuminating youth development in German soccer will cover the structures and objectives in place at FC Bayern. The previous articles have dealt with the general approach in German soccer and the requirements by the DFB (German Football Association) and DFL (Deutsche Fussball Liga) for all first and second league clubs as well as nationwide policies and structures in place to identify, train, and develop the youth.
The second article illustrated the youth development at a unique Bundesliga club, SC Freiburg, whose outspoken philosophy is to be a player development club, and it has worked for them.
FC Bayern is one of the top clubs in Europe, whose youth development has been a somewhat overlooked but who over the last 10 years have made constant improvements to their organization, which has brought up world class players such as Phillip Lahm, Thomas Müller, and Bastian Schweinsteiger, who have risen through the junior ranks to domestic, European, and World Champion glory.
Why focus on the youth?
One may ask why a wealthy club like Bayern, or any for that matter, invest in youth development when they can easily let other clubs, like SC Freiburg or Ajax Amsterdam, develop quality players and then purchase them in the open market?
From several angles, it makes a lot of sense for even wealthier clubs to have a well functioning youth development structure:
- It defrays costs of expensive future transfers to remain competitive;
- It grooms players with a strong identification of the club and hence the fans in reverse;
- As part of the continued implementation of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP), squad sizes will be limited to 25 and potential sanctions resulting from the violation of the UEFA home-grown players rules, with an unlimited amount of players allowed under the age of 21.
Financial fracas
The fine print of the above mentioned UEFA rule mandates clubs entering European competitions to have at least eight home-grown players on their 25 men-squad. This means that a player, regardless of his place of birth, has had to be registered between the ages of 15 and 21 with his current club for a period of three entire seasons or 36 months OR with another club within the football association, in this case the DFB, for the same period.
If this stipulation is not met, clubs face sanctions, included fines, wage bill restraints, and squad size reductions, which has happened to Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain in the past; so, there is another regulatory incentive to maintain and develop a well functioning youth developmental system: to avoid a reduction in squad size in European competition, where a deep bench is needed the most.
Since all clubs are, pardon me, SHOULD be run as for profit businesses, unless you have a Russian oligarch or Middle Eastern oil baron as sponsor, the explosive costs of salaries and transfer will make more clubs rethink their youth development to improve the economics of their football operations, and for the benefit of the local youth who identify most with their home club.
For example, the FC Bayern youth development program costs roughly €3 Million per year according to the Youth Academy Report by the European Club Association (ECA) from 2012 (compare that to €10 Million for La Masia at Barcelona with another €10 Million for the U19 and FC Barcelona II), even though €5 Million was cited in a different article from 11 Freunde in 2012.
Let us assume that presently €5 Million is a good number for present day. Toni Kroos, who joined the FC Bayern junior team at age 16, was sold to Madrid in 2014 for about €25 Million. That transfer fee pays for 5 years of youth development at Bayern and that alone is a big incentive to groom and develop players internally, even if they might not remain with their root club for their whole career.
More money arguments for a well functioning youth development system?
Current Bayern players like Müller (joined age 11), Lahm (joined age 11), Holger Badstuber (joined age 13), Schweinsteiger (joined age 14), David Alaba (joined age 14) have all risen through the ranks of the youth teams to first team starters. The combined current market value of these players is €134 Million.
Enough about the past, though. Let’s look at the current state of Bayern’s youth academy:
FC Bayern currently develops roughly 165 youths across 10 youth teams starting with the U9 up to the U23, which is essentially the second team and competes in the Regionalliga Bayern (Fourth Division). The top youth teams of the U17 and U19 practice five times a week on the training grounds at the Säbener Straße, which is starting to feel the strain on the capacity, hence Bayern will invest millions in a new youth development centre in the North of Munich, which is planned to be completed in 2017.
The last certification of the youth development academy in 2014 awarded FC Bayern three out of three stars, which is an improvement over 2011 when two stars were given. This certification is conducted every three years by Belgian consulting firm Double PASS, is mandated by the DFB and the DFL (Deutsche Fußball Liga) and is a requirement for receiving the license to participate in the Bundesliga competition. The FC Bayern youth development academy is headed by former Bayern player Wolfgang Dremmler and received and “excellent level” in four out of eight reviewed categories.
Scouting sagas
In addition to working with regional partner clubs like Unterhaching, Ingolstadt, Ulm and others to scout and attract players, FC Bayern also holds an annual talent weekend, where more than 500 kids between the ages of 8 and 10 from the region, Germany and some European countries attend. An average of 7 kids will be picked. Yeah, that’s about 1%.
Another investment in the organizational structure of FC Bayern that indicates a refocusing and further strengthening on youth development was the 2014 hiring of Michael Reschke, a 35-year veteran of youth development, youth coaching and managerial responsibilities at Bayer Leverkusen, in the newly created position of technical director supporting Matthias Sammer in dealings with the licensed players, the junior team, and scouting and transfer activities. In addition to Reschke, Heiko Vogel, former coach of FC Basel, now coaches the U19 and will take over FC Bayern II with the start of the 2015/16 season.
There is a lot of investments from FC Bayern in the future of the their stars but what about the current generation of young players?
In addition to Pierre-Emile Højbjerg (age 20) on loan to Augsburg, and Julian Green (age 20) on loan to Hamburg, the next young talents trying to break into the first team are Gianluca Gaudino (age 18), Sinan Kurt (age 18 and recently acquired from Borussia Mönchengladbach) Lucas Scholl (age 18), and potentially Steeven Ribéry (age 19). Winning trophies, however, has not seemed to be a top priority just yet as the U19 and U17 have certainly been high up in the league tables of the junior Bundesliga, but the last championship titles were in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
Even though there are certainly some future Bayern squad members to be found within the own ranks, Bayern does become active in the transfer market for younger players as recent purchase have indicated but also irked some sporting directors.
The purchase of 18-year old Sinan Kurt from Gladbach for €1 Million and 19-year old Joshua Kimmich for €7 Million from VfB Stuttgart are seen as alarming by the competition. Max Eberl, manager of Mönchengladbach thinks that Bayern harvesting those players before them reaching maturity can ultimately result in a player not fully developing but turning into an bench-warmers at Bayern, not being able to garner valuable playing time at that age and competing on a high Bundesliga level. Whether or not that will happen, remains to be seen, as head coach Pep Guardiola has experience with integrating young riser from La Masia into the first team at Barcelona.
Bayern is also not averse to loaning young players, which will give those valuable playing time and maintain control over their future, and the option to return to Bayern or be transferred elsewhere, see Højbjerg and Green. It is a business after all, but not a strategy: in a recent interview Reschke explained that “loans are not a concept of ours, but always individual decisions. We carefully weigh what makes sense for a young player.” Contrary to these two loans, arch rival Chelsea seams to make a second business from acquiring and loaning young players to other clubs and then deciding who gets to return. The last figure for total Chelsea loans in 2014/15 was 35.
Unanswered questions, answered
To finish up this journey through the Bayern system, the FC Bayern Junior Team was kind enough to answer the following questions to help us understand their goals and culture better:
Q: How many youths (% or number in an age group) does FC Bayern scout from regional or nationwide clubs and in what direction does the trend continue?
A: The trend is developing into the direction that many Bundesliga clubs bet on players from their own youth. At FC Bayern this is rather difficult because the quality level of the first team is very high.
Q: Over the last five years, how many players from the FC Bayern junior team made the jump to the first team in the Bundesliga?
A: Julian Green, Pierre-Emile Hojberg, Gianluca Gaudino, Patrick Weihrauch directly at FC Bayern. Players that made it at Bundesliga clubs are Vladimir Rankovic (Hannover 96), Alessandro Schöpf (1. FC Nuremberg), Emre Can (Bayer Leverkusen, now FC Liverpool), Benno Schmitz (RB Salzburg), and Christian Derflinger (Hamburger SV).
Q: Do you see the effort justified that some parents take on so that their offspring can move to Munich to have a minimal chance of becoming a professional footballer?
A: Parents do not move as most of the players live in the metropolitan area of Munich anyway where they can take advantage of the shuttle service. External players will often live in the boarding house of the youth academy.
Q: How old does a player have to be where FC Bayern is willing to step up and purchase him?
A: This is clearly regulated by the Deutsche Fussball Liga (DFL) that a transfer is only allowed at the age of 16 internationally. Within the Bundesliga there is a DFL regulation, which clearly determines the transfer fees.
Q: What positive stimuli does FC Bayern hope to garner from the cooperation with Global Premier Soccer in the U.S.?
A:
1. Increased familiarity of FC Bayern with the youth
2. To become a firmly established soccer brand in the USA over the long term.
3. Transfer players in both directions.
To conclude, Bayern’s youth development has already produced World Champions in the recent past and is also making great improvements, structurally and philosophically for its future. The investments in “bricks not legs” will very likely pay dividends in seasons to come and hopefully will develop more legs like those of Thomas Müller – there simply aren’t ganglier ones that score the most unique goals.
- Youth development in German football, part two: SC Freiburg
- Youth development in German football, part one: investing
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