I assume he meant Moussa rather than Karamoko, who falls into the Frimpong, Wanyama, Van Dijk category of guys who signed at 20/21 and were immediately ready for first team football. That's what Celtic do best. Guys coming from decent leagues who can go straight into the first team, it's a decent environment for a player to develop. Idah was 22 when he arrived but basically fits into the same category of footballer.Originally Posted by nigel-harps1954
Exactly. Celtic works well as a shop window for already developed players given it's geographical proximity to the big money in England and the easy access they are afforded to group stage European football. It's a geographical quirk, basically. But their youth development record is pitiful.
Yeah, he listed first team signings in a discussion about youth development and fell back onto McGregor, who broke through a generation ago at this stage. Their ages might be similar in some instances but the comparison rightly ends there. Chalk & cheese.
But this is also the guy who said someone high up in the FAI told him the contract was ready for Sagnol and it was good as done, around the same time HH was getting on a Ryanair out of Reykjavik a couple of weeks back.
It's not that simplistic, at any club, especially one in a title race every single season where coming second is coming last. The manager may not be expected to bring youth through and therefore won't, no matter how good you might be if you got a chance. It looks a lot like that is the situation at Celtic, they have so few and give hardly any opportunities. You might be excellent but not fit his set up. He might look at you and think you aren't good enough and be wrong, and the game is littered with these errors of judgment, one of my favourites is Leeds releasing Dennis Irwin as not good enough.
More recently, Aston Villa dropped eighteen million this week, on a player they let leave this time last year. Was he worth a chance that he didn't get ?
Yes, it looks like he was, because what they already had just cost about twenty million to get back.
The Man City trio, Grealish, Foden, and Palmer. One had to leave to get games, not only was he good enough, he made their finals squad ahead of one and outshone the other at the finals on bits & scraps of minutes off the bench.
There is more to getting the chance than being good enough to take it if it does come your way.
Having to pick a player who only really broke through in 2014 just proves my point, thanks for that.
PS he's in the same category as Josh Cullen, he's not that good either.
The issue your totally missing is, that the reason they're not pulling up trees is the fact they wasted years at Celtic. It's so detrimental to spend 2 years formative years playing no football. Celtic reserves playing in the lowlands league, which is probably the equivalent to like the second division in LSL.
1) Luca Connell - age 17 season, breaks into a team playing regualry in the championship, wins multiple MOTM awards. Called up to the irish senior team.
Age 18 season, signs for Celtic. Makes 0 appearances.
Age 19 season, makes 0 appearances for Celtic. In March of the year, he's loaned to a 4th tier Scottish side - gets them promoted, at this point loses his place in the ireland 21s
Age 20 season, loaned to the same team now in the 3rd tier of Scottish football. Wins promotion with them again and is released by Celtic
Age 21 season, signs for Barnsley and is in the PFA team of the year
Age 22 season, Barnsley reject interest from the championship sides to keep him - misses from the start of the season to November with incredibly serious post viral fatigue but by the end of the season, he's back playing very well
But if he'd signed for one of the championship clubs who wanted him instead of Celtic, he'd be far far better off...
Afolabi signed for Celtic off the back of an incredible U19 Euros where he was named in the team of the tournament. That team included what are now 4 Spain internationals (Ferran Torres, Eric Garcia, Juan Miranda, Antonio Blanco), 3 lads at champions league clubs (Veira at Arsenal, Tenas at PSG and Solet at RB Salzburg). The remaining four lads are two lads playing in the Portuguese league and one lad who's played 170 games for Lyon. Then you've got Afolabi. He rejected clubs in the premier league, the championship, league 1, russia, netherlands and germany to sign for Celtic. I spoke to one of his best friends at the time before he had moved and he said they were trying to find the balance between him signing for a club where he would definitely play (knowing if he signed for Palace or West Ham, he'd be with the reserves) vs going too low down the leagues, i.e. getting stuck in League 1 and not getting back up as high as he thought/hoped he could. Celtic promised him that he'd be straight in the first team and he'd have opportunities and games. It never materialised. He signed in August and within 2 weeks Neil Lennon said he was on the cusp of the the team. In September again, he said that he had really impressed him. In October, he said he was blown away by his performances in training and for the reserves. In January, he was loaned to the scottish championship before Covid hit. Was sent on a series of other loans to scottish backwaters before being released. He came back to Ireland absolutely shatter of confidence and after a rough 6 months, in his first full season, was top scorer in LOI before moving to Belgium for an undisclosed fee (approx €500k? initial bid of 200k was rejected). once again, if he had decent development between 19 and 21 instead of regression and stagnation, he'd be a much much better player now. Circa 2019, he was the 5th in a group of promising strikers (Parrott, Idah, Obafemi, Connolly and Afolabi - and yet he's the only one without an international appearance).
You can do the same with Okoflex who was so so highly regarded by Arsenal but Brendan Rodgers told him he'd do for him what he did for Raheem Sterling at 17. And you can look at Lee O'Connor, who was signed on the same day as Frimpong (playing the same position). He was already an Irish international, came second to Mason Greenwood for United's young player of the year and then absolutely stagnated. Duff has spoken about it where Lee was promised loads and then a few hours later they signed Frimpong and everything that was promised to Lee was given to the far more physically developed and better Frimpong. Both had the ability to become first teamers, but once Frimpong signed O'Connor had no chance.
Rovers fans have spoken about Kenny returning a shell of his former self and being a far better player at Sligo than he was when he arrived back in Ireland for the 2023 season and it was only this season when he looked right again.
Hard to know what Celtic can do. The answer would be to allow reserve teams to move up the pyramid like they do in Spain. And in fairness, you'd probably get a great crowd at Celtic reserves if they were playing on Sunday in the scottish championship - but they can't get it done and the standard of the first team is so much higher at Celtic and Rangers that talented kids from the academy can't immediately step up unlike the rest of the teams in Scotland, where if promising enough at 16, 17, 18, 19 - you'll get minutes easily.
Also they invest yearly in those players from foreign leagues who are immediately ready for the first team, hoping they can flip them for triple the price in 2 years time - we've mentioned plenty, so they always have a massive squad and a tonne of players at the fringes of the first team. Currently the first team squad is at 28, excluding the likes of Lawal - and they're actively looking to add to it. Liverpool comparatively have a senior squad of 22 right now, which means there's so much more opportunity for kids to come in and make an impact.
My advice to Lawal, Quinn, Kenny, Cannon and Asogie would be to get out as soon as you can. The chances are so incredibly stacked against you...
Last edited by elatedscum; 25/07/2024 at 6:13 PM.
How many man-of-the-match awards did he win in his eight starts, which saw one point and two goals scored for a team that were such an absolute shambles off the pitch they had to play a 17-year-old Lucan Connell because most of their squad had left?
Players with career paths like Afolabi, Okoflex and Kenny are dime a dozen. A while back I had a look at the Liverpool U21 team that toured Ireland in 2015 and only one of them went on to make it any way big (Sergi Canos, now at Valencia). Even Ben Woodburn - the Welsh wunderkid - is after signing for Salford now. Is Liverpool a club to avoid too?
There may well be a kernel of truth in your post - I think it can be hard to break through at a club under such pressure to keep winning that the safe option can be seen as the best one - but I don't think the examples quoted are the best ones to argue your point.
Alright Celtic fan.
& Liverpool might not be the best one to argue yours.
Kelleher. TAA. Jones. Bradley.
Elliot. Danns. Doak. Phillips.
Some are exclusively their work, some joined their academy from other clubs, but all came through there.
Celtic by comparison ..... was his point.
Trying to argue with Celtic fans about the club they support is like talking to the wall...clear example was using an u21 side from one tour.
My point was the range of players elated selected was way too narrow to use them to make a point about Celtic.
Is Celtic's academy great? Maybe, maybe not. Is it responsible for where Connell, Afolabi, Okoflex and Kenny now find themselves? I think that's a bit of a stretch. Any big club will have plenty of players in their academy not make it.
Broaden the parameters in relation to Celtic as much as you want, you won't find a functional development path. He selected the players of interest to this forum, granted. He made good points.
The saying goes, when in Rome, they also say when on holiday eat where the locals eat. Have a look at Scotlands under 21s squad & recent call ups. They won't go near the place & there's a reason & hair splitting his argument on sample size is neither here nor there.
But do you really think a year at Celtic is all that's standing between the players he mentioned and a place in the Ireland squad? That's how the post reads to me.
Or do you think they were capable of going on a downward career all on their own?
I think its reasoned and credible to judge being sent to Highlands League at such a key development stage is not how things should be. The game is all about levels, that level has no relevance to where these players aspire to be in the following year or two. And its not working.
Lads saying they should be good enough to break through if they're talented enough, is not the full picture, its part of the equation but only part. If development, coaching, contact time with other top prospects wasn't important, why do all the big clubs have kids in their systems and on their radars from seven & eight years of age ? It isn't for the want of a hobby.
What happened to Afolabi can happen, yes. But with our Celtic lads it keeps happening.
Afolabi had numerous ineffective loans in the Scottish Championship. Looks like he was just ****e.
Lawal got a full season on loan in League One. Got relegated from it too. Seems to have been one of Fleetwood's better players, but that's not saying much. Still, something to build on. But it's a bit much to expect him to go from a relegated League One team straight into a Champions League group stage side, don't you think?
Kenny got a loan in the Scottish Championship - about LoI level really. Wasn't great there, but then there were questions raised as to why Celtic signed him in the first place. The only Celtic flop there was in the scouting; what happened after that was entirely predictable.
Connell got a decent move out of Celtic. And that's fine - we don't need the players to break through at Celtic necessarily. His Bolton games are ludicrously hyped up.
Okoflex is a knacker who was caught making inappropriate comments about an 8-year-old girl while at Celtic. Seems not the smartest in general.
And yeah, going out on loan defeats the point of going to Celtic to an extent. But that happens at other clubs too. So the chances are there (at non Highland level)
In general I'd prefer to see guys getting first team games rather than joining big clubs cos they see their names in lights. But I don't know those careers would have panned out a huge amount differently had they been at different clubs to be honest.
Grand.
& I think spending any time in Highlands League & at a club with a clear oven ready only first team operating model, while trying to ( being close to ) breakthrough in an elite level tiny margins ruthless environment, is unnecessary self harm & it looks like the best of Scottish youth are on that page too, all of them.
Its time pointlessly spent & it increases the already stacked against you odds & why do that ?
There may well be something in that for sure. Though you suggest some were "close to" a breakthough? Were Kenny or Afolabi really close to a breakthrough while floundering about in the Scottish Championship? Or are you overhyping our players a little bit again? Lawal may be close - but then you'd be fairly ****ed off if he was in the Highland League this year. Hopefully a loan a level about Fleetwood.
The contract was ready, but Sagnol turned them down on the Sunday evening - the FAI then offered a contract to Hallgrimsson and he accepted it and was announced on the Wednesday.
That's why Hallgrimsson's name was never mentioned, came totally out of the blue and caught everyone by surprise.
All very FAI.
Anyway hope you enjoyed the scroll back through my previous posts.
What I mean is, consider the thousands of kids continent wide attached to clubs, and these lads make it to being contracted to a club who can offer a life changing contract and maybe more if you do well. That's what I mean by being close, they've already made it way further than most, they've got a real chance, few get to where they got to.
& at that point, to make a decision that sees you togging out for Highlands League. Jesus, why would you.
Ah, Miley no no. I didn't scroll back, don't be like that
I remembered laughing at it at the time, was all.
Great story too. Fair play.
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