West Ham United’s under-18s are on the verge of reaching the FA Youth Cup final for the first time since 1999.
The young Hammers are managed by former first team player Kevin Keen, who made 279 club appearances and scored 30 goals for West Ham between 1986 and 1993. He's so far led his side to a stunning campaign in the Under-18s Premier League South, with the team currently 12 points clear at the top of the table and needing just a point from their final three games to set up a national final with the winner of the northern section, likely to be one of Manchester City and Sunderland.
Outside of the league, they have gone on an excellent run in the FA Youth Cup and away wins over Sheffield United, Burnley, Stoke City and Ipswich Town have set up a home clash on Thursday night at the London Stadium against Southampton, the side who pipped West Ham to top spot in the south league last season.
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Unlike many of their counterparts, West Ham’s side has some star names that have already had first-team exposure. Striker Divin Mubama has made four first-team appearances, including a first senior goal during last month’s Europa Conference League win over AEK Larnaca, while defenders Ollie Scarles and Kaelan Casey have also played for the first-team this term.
With 16 wins from 19 league matches, West Ham’s teenagers are a proven force to be reckoned with, but go into their Youth Cup semi-final with Southampton knowing they have a tough test ahead of them.
“We were decent last year, we finished second in the league to Southampton actually last year and we felt like we could have nicked it, but Southampton are obviously a good academy,” Keen told football.London .
“We knew that last year we were good, then you lost that under-18 group that go to under-19s and then the group coming in have really, really kicked on. We thought we had a good team, but at the same time, until the season is over, we’ll see how good they are and whether or not they will get on that wall or not is the big thing.”
The wall Keen talks about is in situ in the club’s under-18s training ground at Chadwell Heath, where players who make their full debuts for the club in the Premier League are printed.
Some illustrious names are on the list but not since Jeremy Ngakia in January 2020 has anyone been added to it, with current first-teamers Declan Rice and Ben Johnson being two of the three names before that.
Published over four boards, there are plenty of star names adorned across them including Mark Noble, Frank Lampard Jr and Sr, Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick, Jermain Defoe, Tony Cottee, Bobby Moore, Harry Redknapp and Geoff Hurt, to name a few.
The under-18s’ success on the pitch this season has been great, but the overall goal is to produce players for the first-team, with Keen now targeting a recreation of the golden generation of academy players from the late 1990s and early 2000s, the same era when West Ham last got this far in the FA Youth Cup.
“That is a real Golden Generation,” Keen explained. “Our challenge is to get one in the team who will play 50 games. Ben Johnson is the last one. Declan Rice before that. To go play one, two, three, four games?
“That’s not our goal. We want the person to go in and play 50 games. Ben Johnson has just gone by that. There’s a real family feel at West Ham’s academy, helped by the number of ex-players with roles at the club."
Among those that Keen is referring to is head of academy Kenny Brown Jr, who took up the role last November and who played over 60 league games for West Ham as a player, while his father Ken Brown played 386 league matches for West Ham between 1953 and 1967.
That family feel is what gives West Ham’s academy one of their unique selling points. By the club's own admission, they know that their own facilities may be less attractive that their London neighbours at Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham, but the family feel, togetherness and path into the first-team is what the club use to win over potential new recruits.
“I’ll always say when you bring a boy in, whether it’s a pre-academy, under-12s, whatever age he is, if he comes in here, I know he’ll love it,” said Brown. “I’ll back us and our environment.
“Even though we’ve spent £4/5million on this site, you won’t go to Rush Green or Little Heath and be blown away by it. If anything, you’ll go ‘hmm, a bit underwhelming.’ What we do invest in is the staff and I think that’s why we can say that with real trust and real honesty is the way that the environment has been created here, is very much a family one.
"I know that feedback from when they first come in, to now, these boys we’re talking about, the under-18s, the parents are on that same journey. The boys coming in at under-9 don’t come here alone, they’re here four times a week and we appreciate that and we get that.
“I think what you’ll find in the short period you’ve been here this morning, everyone’s accessible, everyone’s door’s open, you can speak to anyone you want. Everyone will give you time, and I think that’s really important because that’s the culture we’ve created here.
“I’ll back us for any boy that comes in here, any staff member, we’re getting staff members from so called bigger clubs enquiring about if we’ve got spaces here, if we’ve got anything coming up here. Again, yes it helps that we’ve got the 18s doing well because people sort of look at it, but they’ve realised that actually, and it does get out, just like when someone has got a poor culture or a poor environment, people know about that in football. I think that’s the pleasing thing for me anyway, I’m in a position of obviously heading up an academy, how it’s perceived is reasonably favourable.”
Keen added: “We haven’t got the all singing, all dancing training ground. You look at some of the facilities that some of our rivals in London have got and even outside of London, the majority of the facilities are very high standard.
“Our facilities are good, but what we sell ourselves on being a real family club. Everyone is together, everyone is in it, everyone wants to go in the right direction and then the other sales pitch for us is that if you’re good enough, you’ll get a chance to play in the first team. Divin Mubama, who is a youth team player, has played in the first team. Ollie Scarles, who is a youth team scholar, has played in the first team. That’s our big selling point, that’s why you come to West Ham.
“You look at the boards, you look at the people around the place, the people who have come through the academy. We feel like we do a really good job here, we really, really push players and whatever level, whatever age you are, if you are good enough to go and train with the first team, or the 21s, then that’s where you are going to go.
“There’s no holding people back, it’s if you are good enough to go and play, go and play. Mark Noble set that example in the Premier League era, before that, you had Rio, you had Frank Lampard, you go further you had Tony Cottee, Alan Dickin, George Parris, I could sit here and just keep reeling off. Those are the selling points for us, the togetherness, the family feel of the football club.
“People come in here and go, I can’t believe the atmosphere and what it’s like. It’s the people behind it, the coaches, the chef, the bloke who fixes the lights, whoever that may be, it’s got a family feel. That and the fact that if you are good enough, you are going to play for us.”
Another part of the family feel at the West Ham academy is having one of the club's own greats as a sporting director, but unlike any other you are likely to see across the game of football. Ex-Hammers captain Mark Noble retired from playing last year after 550 appearances for West Ham and in January, assumed the role of sporting director.
While splitting his duties between the first-team and under-21s at Rush Green and the under-18s and younger age groups between Chadwell Heath and Little Heath, Noble also mucks in with the academy training sessions, giving advice to players while still playing as much as he can at the age of 35.
“It’s ridiculous,” Brown explained. “He flaked it on the settee in my office yesterday because he plays two hours five-a-side with his mates at Goals on the A12, I think there’s about 20 of them and it’s carnage.
“He plays there, then he’ll come here, he has a shower, half has a sleep on the settee and then he goes back, because obviously his boy Lenny is in the under-13s. He’ll come and only last week, he trained the whole of the session with the 16s, our new intake of scholars are training with the sporting director, obviously a Premier League and West Ham legend, is training with them, the whole session.
“He trains with them, then moves over to Lenny’s group, the 13s and joins in with them. But everything I talk about, I can just say look at how our sporting director is, he’ll come in here, make everyone welcome. He’ll go out there and speak to anyone and everyone. It doesn’t happen, but that’s him and we appreciate it because we see it every day. That doesn’t happen at clubs, I know that and we don’t push him to things, he’s the one driving it, he’s the one doing it and he’ll spend time here.
“He’s got a lovely big office at the first-team training ground but he’s never in it, when he first turned up, he had the staff kit, tracksuit and that and he doesn’t look right, because you’re thinking you’re still a player, or your thinking he should be in a suit or something, but he’s more in a tracksuit than he’s ever been, so he’s bowling around in that. I think it’s a positive thing, obviously to promote the academy.”
Keen agreed: “He’s here two, three times a week. Of those, he’ll train with my group once a week. He’ll train with the under-16s. He’ll train with the under-15s. He knows nearly all the kids in the academy. He speaks to them.
“He speaks to Lewis Orford and Ollie Scarles, two of my first-years who are pretty good. He pulls them to the side and gives them nuggets here and there and that is priceless. That is something I would say is exclusive to West Ham.
“I don’t think you’ll have too many academies where you’ve got a bloke who played 500 games for the first team and is now sporting director doing that. When he trains, he trains properly. If there’s a tackle, there’s a tackle. It’s a proper training session.”
Has Noble still got the talent that saw him play 550 first-team matches for West Ham though?
Keen jokes that Noble might just squeeze into his time, if he was half his age, adding that fellow academy graduates Rice and Johnson still pop in to the academy quarters to say hello from time to time.
“He might just nick into my team if he was young enough,” Keen joked. “Dec (Declan Rice) and Jonno (Ben Johnson), they pop down and always show an interest. But Mark is the one. His lad plays in the academy, he wants to know about everything. When we played Stoke, we sat down and watched Stoke’s previous games together and came up with ways of playing against them.
“He, out of all the academy graduates, is really involved. We always have people coming back (former players), ‘Can I pop in and say hello and watch training?’ That is the West Ham sell – the family, the togetherness.”
There is a lot to be excited about with this group of under-18s, not just their current results but their potential.
Not only are they smashing it on the pitch and have been West Ham’s best group of academy prospects since that golden generation over 20 years ago, but off it, the second year scholars have completed their education course two months earlier than expected, something which Keen takes plenty of pride in.
“Everything about it excites me. The opportunity to play in our first team excites me Watching them on a Saturday morning excites me,” Keen explains.
“Not just the attacking players. Kaelan Casey has got a massive, massive chance. He came on in the game in Romania, was on the bench for the Tottenham game, the fact that he reminds me of Alvin Martin, he reads the game, he can head it, he can pass it, he’s got a desire to want to do well for this club.
“There are so many things that excite me. It excites me that my second-year group have just got unbelievable results in their education – everyone has finished their education two months early and got distinctions and that excites me. It excites me that they’re turning into young adults who are proud to represent this football club. I wouldn’t say we play a typical brand of academy football – we play an exciting, attacking, aggressive, forward-thinking brand.
“This year has been fantastic. We’re going to play at the London Stadium, we’ve played at Portman Road, we’ve played at what I can the Britannia, or the Bet365 Stadium. Hopefully we can get to the Youth Cup final.”
“I feel like this group is the best we’ve had for a while. They’ve got to keep working hard and hopefully they’ll get an opportunity and end up playing 50-plus games for the club. That’s the dream of all the coaches, from the Under 9s to the 18s to the 21s.
“I’m hopeful we’ve got two or three who can really have a career at West Ham. Come watch them on Thursday night and see what you think.”
West Ham take on Southampton on Thursday night at 7pm at the London Stadium, with a trip to either Arsenal or Manchester City up for grabs in the final later this month.
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