False invoicing is one of the most common money laundering typologies.
I don’t think City or any other buying club would risk this, especially considering the risk of shutting down the youth department. They just have a very good youth academy and apparently produce young players which gets immediately sold if they have any potential but not ready for first team due to certain circumstances.
A few high profile ex-pupils succeeding under the banner of other clubs, some getting good outings in the favorable environment of a first team running at the highest performance and just in general benefiting from the very radiant achievements of the club...
Plus high profile academies of top clubs (City, United, Chelsea, Real, Barcelona, PSG...) just being more attractive, having higher budgets, better accomodations, already sitting on big local talent pools, better scouting and just outright buying international child & teen prospects.
Not to say there's no creative accounting involved but there's some sensible reasons why they're making good business.
I think if United gets back on the road to consistent success in the league, the academy players will suddenly look shinier.
There's a tendency perhaps to overcook prospects at MU that could be fixed and help raise the financial return when they get transferred. Hopefully with the first team being better built, there will be less of a tendency to keep the young ones around to make up numbers "just in case". It's fine having a path for academy players to get promoted if they can make the cut, but feel they often were a band aid on the lack of depth and some of the lads could have benefited from a loan or permanent transfers.
Agree on this. When I take a look at some of other European young academies which are better than those mentioned e.g. Ajax or Dinamo Zagreb (stars produced such as Modric, Kovacic, Gvardiol and many more), but unfortunately they’re are not that fancy as the big clubs because they can’t offer all these fancy stuff which other teams have. But in terms of talents, they’re are amazing.
When taking a closer look at City’s young academy development, Pep did really introduce a certain way through all young systems to play and to live this way, hence since his arrival they’re producing some talents but many also leave after couple of years they have no future in first team. At the end, it’s a good business for the club.
Grrrr when will get some serious movement on selling players. We need to get Amrabat into that midfield. I also can't bury my annoyance at losing Kim to Bayern for the exact same reason
Same here, waiting for some movement in terms of selling players. We made good transfers and have a very good team, but we must absolutely sell some of the players. Hopefully there’s already some negotiations happening and we’re not at the beginning.
We hold onto players for too long and give them large wages relative to their stature - it really is that simple.
For instance we could've gotten 30m for Henderson and at least 20m for Tuanzebe just a few years ago. The right move would've been to sell them with a buyback clause at the time. Instead, Tuanzebe left on a free and Henderson is likely going on loan yet again this year because nobody wants to pay a large transfer fee on top of his massive wages.
We definitely stick to players for too long. Apart from the ones you mentioned, this also happened to Lingard and some other players. There’s no continuity and fast decision making. Instead of we keep them, loan them out, hope the player becomes an uprising star, and realize he’s the same person when he left, just one year older and one year less contract. So we renew the contract, pay more money, and loan him again. At the end, we complain why a player left for free or a small fee.
I do have a feeling ETH is quite decisive and removes all the remaining players who aren’t needed or have no potential to become a first team squad member. Finally someone who has the will to change something on the long term and improve the young academy.
