Since the start of 2020, I have been researching career pathways of current under-23 players across Europe’s top five leagues. As a result, I have so far distinguished five different routes into professional football. This post is dedicated to the third of them, which I called the international route. It is about players who moved abroad as teenagers to fulfil their dream of a senior football career.
Some children could be deemed fortunate.
They happen to have been born in a city, or at least close enough to start training at a professional football club academy at an early age.
Others could be regarded as less fortunate.
They happen to have been born in a town or village and would only be able to join a professional academy set-up as teenagers. If they are ready for it.
But some – no matter where they come from – decide to go via a route other than the English and the French one.
FIRST-TEAM CHANCE
Cesc Fàbregas was possibly the first, as it later turned out, high-profile footballer to have opted for the international route of player development.
Aged 16, the boyhood Barcelona fan felt he might struggle to nail down a place in the Catalan club’s first-team, so made a brave decision to move abroad.
His senior debut for Arsenal came the following month after he had signed for the London club in September 2003. He has never looked back since, even though he did return to Barcelona for a three-year spell in 2011.
If Fàbregas was a trail blazer, he has proved an influential one indeed.
Aspiring teenage footballers – particularly from Spain, it may seem – have regularly travelled abroad – usually to England, again at least seemingly – in pursuit of a professional career since.
Manchester City centre back Eric García, who left Barcelona for England at exactly the same age as Fàbregas had done a generation earlier, is perhaps the best recent example of the trend.
BIGGER WORLD
Fàbregas, García and many others may have gone international wary of the enormity of the challenge of breaking into the first-team at one of the biggest football clubs in the world.
For others, a move abroad is either an opportunity to continue their development in a more professional set-up or even the only chance of making a career in the game.
An ex-teammate of Fàbregas, Wojciech Szczęsny also joined Arsenal at the age of 16. His previous club, now joint record-time Polish Champions Legia Warsaw, are only opening a proper training centre this month.
More recently, future teammate of Szczęsny at Juventus, Dejan Kulusevski first set his foot on Italian soil aged 16, too, having swapped Brommapojkarna for Atalanta four years ago.
Perhaps most evidently, however, the international route is particularly popular among players from Africa.
(And not necessarily from South America where young footballers tend to make their senior debuts back home before getting signed by a European club.)
Here, the name of Sadio Mané, who travelled to Metz from Dakar-based Génération Foot academy at the age of 18, possibly stands out.
Both Gambia-born Musa Barrow, who, again, Atalanta signed from a local club in Banjul aged 18, and Musa Juwara also provide perfect examples of players who had to swap a continent, let alone country, to be able to fulfil their career – and life – ambitions.
CONTROVERSY
As with both the English and French route, there are also plenty of talking points surrounding the international pathway.
Barcelona were notoriously handed a transfer ban back in 2014 after FIFA ruled the Catalan giants had breached transfer and registration rules in the cases of as many as 10 of their international, under-18 players.
Andre Onana, Bobby Adekanye, Ian Poveda and Takefusa Kubo were among the teenagers who had to leave the club at the time.
(Under current regulations, players are allowed to move abroad within the European Union from the age of 16 and once they turn 18 when it comes to transfers from outside of the EU. Unless, as in the case of Marseille-born Jérémie Boga who joined Chelsea aged 12 after his father found a new job in London, there are other than sporting reasons behind a move.)
Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid and Chelsea have since all received their transfer bans for similar reasons while other big clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester City have also come under scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Chelsea have also been accused of signing international teenage footballers purely for financial reasons – in order to sell them at a profit in the future rather than provide them with a pathway to the first-team squad.
It seems every route has its winners and losers.
VISIT THIS BLOG LATER THIS MONTH TO LEARN ABOUT THE AMATEUR ROUTE.
In the picture: Eric García left Barcelona for Manchester City at the age of 16 (found here)
BREAKTHROUGH 