Celtic Premier League

[backstothewall]

No, no, I'm not shooting at you for the sake of it, there is value in what you say, however, after investing 3 or 4 years of proper coaching into your best young guy, I don't agree that its for the betterment to then send him to keep the company of weaker players, at that age he will be peaking and will need to kick on. Also, as we are working from a small population base to begin with, its key our elite few's talent is maximized.

Unlikely I realize but as an alternative suggestion, what if such an academy forged links with European sides, like certain bigger clubs in the UK have in Belgium (as a loose example) where the best young guys could spend a period in that system, imagine if we could get it to a standard whereby the most admired European academies were lining up to give our guys a place.

Maybe that's beyond us, I don't know, it would be nice to somehow bypass the UK route into anti football and in most cases the scrap heap.

It would be great to get to the level where our at least some of our players were heading straight to Europe and bypassing Britain completely. I would assume we will always have players coming through the English/Scottish systems given out proximity and historical links, but a balance would be great.

A quick google revealed that Holland, France, England, Italy & Spain have such academies. If we had one some sort of exchange scheme could easily be set up. A couple of months in a European academy would be of massive benefit to an aspiring young footballer. And a couple of months here would probably be good for a young French footballer. There are things that British-style teams do better than anyone (there's bound to be right?).

[Charlie Darwin]

I can see why we'd benefit from an exchange but what would the foreign academies get from it?

[nigel-harps1954]

All this chat of going to Europe and England and what-not. I dream of the day players come to Ireland from other countries to develop, and players here aspire to play at the highest level of the League of Ireland.

[backstothewall]

I can see why we'd benefit from an exchange but what would the foreign academies get from it?

A good chance to improve their English if nothing else.

And when did you last see Spain score a headed goal from a cross from deep. There are some things we are actually very good at in this part of the world. Tika-taka football is great to watch and all but how dangerous would Spain be if they could suddenly change it up and score a goal like Andy Carrolls for England v Sweden