Youth is the only thing worth having
Youth is the only thing worth having
Chelsea, Barcelona, and the race to win over the kids
Vicky Lopez. Maika Hamano. Giulia Dragoni. Martine Fenger. Brooke Aspin. Onyeka Gamero. Wieke Kaptein. Some of these players’ names might be more familiar than others but they all have one thing in common: they were all signed at the age of 18 or under in the past year and a half by Barcelona or Chelsea. There is currently an international arms race going on between two of the biggest clubs in Europe to identify and recruit the best youth talent. The intensity of this drive is symptomatic of where both sides see the future of women’s football heading.
Keira Walsh joining Barcelona for a world record fee in the summer of 2022 might have been the headline grabber but what clubs are really latching onto is the growing frequency in fees being paid for players. Both Arsenal and Chelsea paid six figure sums for young midfielders this summer, and Tottenham’s willingness to drop a British record on Bethany England last January showed that this trend is not exclusive to Champions League sides.
FIFA’s 2022 transfer report showed that the annual year on year growth in terms of transfer revenue was an increase of 62%. 65 different clubs outlayed money on transfers. Even if it has now been 18 months since the world record was last broken (not for Arsenal’s want of trying), the market for women’s players is only going in one direction.
This context is crucial to understand why Chelsea and Barcelona have zoned in on recruiting extensively in younger age groups. As two of the best sides in the world, neither team has much issue in attracting players of any age. In Catarina Macario and Ashley Lawrence, Chelsea landed two of the most in-demand free agents last summer, whilst Barcelona did not have to try very hard to bring Ona Batlle home.
They also have thriving academies, with Barcelona’s undoubtedly being the best in the world having produced Alexia Putellas, Aitana Bonmati and Claudia Pina over the past decade. Chelsea have been a bit slower off the mark on this front but the flurry of contracts handed out to players like Ashanti Akpan, Alexia Potter, and Aimee Claypole has shown they see homegrown players as a valuable pipeline too. Aggie Beever-Jones is their first bona fide academy product in a long time to nail down a proper role in the first team squad.1
Clearly neither Chelsea nor Barcelona need to recruit a load of teenagers. So what has been the impetus here? That lies in the growth of the transfer market.
As clubs with such strong reputations, both Chelsea and Barcelona are able to attract talented youngsters, develop them, and then either see them come good and incorporate them into their first team, or bank on getting a fee for them. The latter part of this is something that realistically has only become a possibility in recent years but it is already showing dividends. Barcelona have made approximately a quarter of a million Euros off selling academy trained players to Arsenal alone, thanks to sales of Gio Quieroz and Laia Codina.
This is hardly a risk free strategy though, with both teams going down different routes to pursue it.
Barcelona have a B team which many of these younger players play for. For example, last season Vicky Lopez, who signed from Madrid CFF in 2022, played 15 times for the B team and 7 times for the first team. Unsurprisingly, Barcelona’s B team are pretty good. They finished top of the Spanish second division last season.
In England, B teams do not exist. Instead, younger players participate in the Professional Game Academy League, an under-21 league with a Northern and Southern Division. Tellingly then, Chelsea have opted to leave many of their signings on loan at their former clubs. Brooke Aspin has stayed at Bristol City with Wieke Kaptein continuing at FC Twente.2
This means they are continuing to play first team football in environments with which they are familiar, rather than either struggling for first team minutes or participating in a youth environment. Chelsea have also been quick to loan out their academy players when they turn 18, following a pattern of a year at a Championship club followed by a year at a WSL side.
Aggie Beever-Jones is the most successful example of this. She had a good loan with Bristol City followed by one with Everton where she did not always shine, but clearly Chelsea felt she had shown enough to get a chance to compete with the senior squad. Jorja Fox has done similar, having gone to Charlton and then Brighton, but an ACL injury at the end of last season makes it impossible to know whether she would have been given the opportunity at Chelsea this year.
Youth development is not a perfect process, however, and loan moves do not always work out. Charlotte Wardlaw had arguably the most successful season of Chelsea’s 2021/22 loanees as she starred in Liverpool’s Championship title winning campaign. However, a failure to get minutes with them in the WSL meant she dropped back down to Lewes for the latter half of 2022/23 before heading to Glasgow City this season. Even staying at a club where you have previously made an impact is no guarantee of continued development.
This highlights one of the concerns around pursuing a strategy such as this. Making a move to a big club is a risk for any player, regardless of age, but younger players can understandably find it harder to deal with the mental strain. Playing time is also of paramount importance, as is being in a positive and supportive environment. On the one hand, the disparity in resources and facilities within the women’s game can make these early big moves more attractive from a developmental perspective. On the other hand, it is important to fight against viewing teenage players as balance-sheet opportunities.
A number of English clubs have complained about the growing trend of bigger teams snapping up their academy products as soon as they turn 18 (clubs in England are unable to offer professional contracts until this point). Aspin is one of those, whilst Manchester United signed highly rated defender Evie Rabjohn from Aston Villa when she turned 18. Under new compensation rules, clubs will be required to pay a maximum of £5000 per year a player has spent in the academy but that still falls far below what their market rate might be perceived as.
Chelsea and Barcelona’s continued success in recruitment might rest on what these players do. The example of Erin Cuthbert, who joined Chelsea as an 18 year old to become an essential part of the squad, taking the captain’s armband in a game just before Christmas, is instructive, whilst 19 year old Maika Hamano will be part of the squad for the second half of the season having impressed on loan at Hammarby.
Meanwhile, Barcelona repeatedly have shown that if you are good enough, you are old enough with 19 year old Salma Paralluelo going straight into the first team upon joining and consequently starring for Spain at the World Cup. The better pathway Chelsea and Barcelona can show young players, the more likely they are to want to join.
The financial issues around Barcelona are well-known and a need to make money to spend money is likely a lot more pressing than it is at Chelsea. But the desire to run a sustainable financial model at women’s clubs will only increase as the game grows and spending within it does likewise. It will not be long until plenty of other clubs start to see their players as assets as well as opportunities. Getting ahead of that curve could serve these two clubs very well in the long run.
I am not counting Lauren James here given she left the club as a 13 year old
Alejandre Bernabe is also still at Real Sociedad but is slightly older at 21, although much of the logic still applies