Soccer Farm Teams

[moly99]

I saw this image on FC Porto's transfer record today:

 
600 million Euros!!?!?!!
 
It really makes me wonder why more teams don't own lower tier clubs they can use to lay away developmental players from South America. Sporting and Benfica do a decent bit of trade with prospects as well. So why don't the Champions League level clubs create AAA clubs they can use to develop their own guys directly instead of buying from the Portuguese clubs?
 
Portugal has almost twice the transfer balance of Brazil itself:
http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/statistik/transfersalden
 
It really is amazing how much they are making by being the middleman between Latin America and the bigger Euro clubs.

 

[Morgan's Magic Snowplow]

There are regulations at both the national and UEFA level about multiple club ownership. In England, it is essentially banned outright. In Spain, you can own multiple clubs but they must play in different divisions (the "B" teams of both Barcelona and Real play in the second division). And you can't have two clubs with the same ownership in the same UEFA club competition.

More generally, if you wanted to invest heavily in South American players you would need to buy a club that both (a) was located in a country like Portugal or Spain where it was easy to get work permits for those players and bring them in and (b) buy/create a club of sufficient stature that the better South American prospects would want to go there as a springboard. That is hard, especially given that this club couldn't participate in Champions League if your main club was in the Champions League.

Finally, making off well in the transfer market is not so easy as it seems from Porto's example. First, they didn't make 600m in those sales, as many (perhaps most) of those players had third party ownership. Second, Porto has great scouts and is a very famous club with lots of advantageous characteristics. If it was so easy to buy South Americans and then sell them for a profit (or develop them into great players for yourself), clubs like Sporting wouldn't be teetering on the brink of insolvency.

Last point: Chelsea has an interesting strategy for accomplishing much of your proposition without actually owning another club. They just buy lots and lots of talented younger players (more Europeans and Africans than South Americans) for relatively cheap and then loan them all around Europe.

 

[AgentOrange]

Juventus is actually exploring buying a club in Portugal for this very purpose. They're also pushing for Italy to allow B teams. I imagine that's an either/or proposition.

Re: Chelsea's loan army strategy, I think the flaw with that that is leading Juve to explore development alternatives is how do you ensure your loanees actually get playing time and don't just waste a year on another club's bench? For the smaller clubs, what is the incentive for them to develop someone else's prospects if these players aren't going to make the difference between them avoiding relegation or qualifying for Europe? If you're going to finish between 17 and 7 no matter what (and arguably Europa League doesn't matter either), it makes the most sense to play guys whom you have a financial stake in.

 

[soxfan121]

Juventus is actually exploring buying a club in Portugal for this very purpose. They're also pushing for Italy to allow B teams. I imagine that's an either/or proposition.

Re: Chelsea's loan army strategy, I think the flaw with that that is leading Juve to explore development alternatives is how do you ensure your loanees actually get playing time and don't just waste a year on another club's bench? For the smaller clubs, what is the incentive for them to develop someone else's prospects if these players aren't going to make the difference between them avoiding relegation or qualifying for Europe? If you're going to finish between 17 and 7 no matter what (and arguably Europa League doesn't matter either), it makes the most sense to play guys whom you have a financial stake in.

 
One of the flaws, to be sure. Another is that the guy might play but he doesn't play in the style/manner that will allow him to challenge for first team minutes when back at the home club.

 

[Schnerres]

If your club/coach develeops a reputation for developing a talent into a national team player, that´s better for a team like FSV Mainz 05. Next time, Bayern loans them a potential Philipp Lahm/Toni Kroos, when they´re 18 years old, instead of VfB Stuttgart or Bayer Leverkusen. There are multiple reasons, why you send a player to club X and they´re different weighted for every player (get starts, play international, play position X, get training with coach y, etc.), but sitting a loan player for the last X matches in general, when relegation is avoided and Europa League is not achievable is just a bad thing to do. As a coach, i would imagine someone would play the best player or afford to then rotate a few (=1-2 maximum) players in, who might have the better chance for the long run, just to see how he plays and how he performs. You don´t want to overwhelm those guys, so you play them in the 2nd team (which in Germany means a 3rd-5th league team for most clubs for 1st and big 2nd league clubs).

 

[teddykgb]

It's not a problem for players like Lahm and Kroos -- they're too good to sit.  It's a problem for players of more marginal talent who need the playing time to develop.  An easy example for me would be Bruno Zuculini, whom City signed from Argentina and loaned to Valencia where he sat the bench for half a year until City recalled him from loan due to the situation (and sent him on another loan to Cordoba).  Valencia is a team that develops talent and it's entirely possible Zuculini just wasn't good enough, but from City's perspective the loan was a disaster.  
 
I think Chelsea get a little too much credit for their "policy" but where I think they've struck a nice balance is in buying players and leaving them in their teams to develop.  Zouma stayed at St. Etienne and they found a home for Courtois and left him there -- the players will only develop if they're sincerely part of a squad and picked regularly and the easiest way to do that is to buy and loan back to the team they were in.