Football is an impatient business, perhaps a reflection of wider society in the 21st century.
There is no time for patience in the modern game; expensive signings must immediately live up to their transfer fee, new managers must quickly get good results and young players are instantly heralded as the next great thing. With Manchester City and their City Football Academy, it's a similar story. Constructed and opened in 2014 to the tune of £200m, the CFA is one of the most impressive but expensive football facilities in the world.
With its 16 outdoor pitches, 7,000 capacity mini-stadium and state of the art gyms, physio and massage rooms, the 18-acre centre was built not merely to provide first-team players with the best facilities available, but to nurture the best young talents in world football. The traditional role of an academy is to produce top quality young players who can graduate to the first-team, living out the dreams of fans and giving a distinctly local flavour to the club.
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These things take time of course, but as previously mentioned, football is not a patient business. As the years went by and none of City's academy players — apart from Kelechi Iheanacho — were able to make the jump from the CFA to the Etihad Stadium across the road. The club came under fire.
'What's the point of having that academy if they don't use the players?', came the cries. At the time it was hard to disagree, but this summer it is becoming clear just how valuable City's academy is — and it's not just about producing players that can play in Pep Guardiola's side.
The project was never about producing a starting 11 of academy graduates that would feature every week in the Premier League and Champions League. For an elite side like City who are expected to compete on all fronts, solely relying on home-grown talents is simply unrealistic.
Phil Foden is a once-in-a-generation talent, a marker of what can be achieved rather than what should be. Young players can aspire to follow his path into Guardiola's first-team, but they likely will never be as good as him.
Cole Palmer looks set to do that this season, with Guardiola keen to utilise the Wythenshawe-born attacker on the right wing following the sale of Gabriel Jesus and the increasingly likely departure of Raheem Sterling. James McAtee is another, but he appears to be a year behind Palmer in terms of development and progress.
However, perhaps a better indicator of the academy's success is not those who make it at City, but those who are sold. City's academy sides have reached such a high level now that now clubs are paying decent sums for players who have hardly played any senior football yet.
On Wednesday the news emerged that Southampton are signing 18-year-old midfielder Romeo Lavia in a deal that could be worth up to £14m. City brought the Belgian teenager into the CFA in 2020 and since then he has made two appearances for the first-team. MEN Sport understands that the deal includes a buy-back clause as well as a 20% sell-on-clause, meaning that City will receive a chunk of any future transfer fees.
The Saints have also recently snapped up young City goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu in a deal worth up to £15m which — like Lavia's deal — includes a buy-back clause. Buzunu joined City in 2019 and impressed on loan at Portsmouth last season.
There have been reports that winger Sam Edozie could depart for Bayer Leverkusen for a similar fee. Ko Itakura and Darko Gyabi are names many City fans will have heard of, but this month they have fetched sums of £4.3m and £5m respectively.
That not-insignificant revenue stream is only going to increase, and ensure the sustainability of City's football and business model for years to come.
Foden, Palmer and McAtee represent tiny ripples in an ocean of young players who have passed through the CFA without ever walking out in the Premier League. But that doesn't make the CFA a failure — the more money City can earn through selling off hot young talents, the more sustainably they can invest in the first-team squad going forwards.
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