The Youth

I promised another writer and here he is. This is his first piece.
His a fanatic Italian-Romanian friend and I have worked with him on other projects and wrote with him on soccerfanbase.com in the past.
Second to none, he has fanatic knowledge of all the European Leagues , even the lesser known ones such as Turkey & Romania!
I have great confidence in his writing ability and he will bring a new perspective on Italian & Milan football.
Balo is a personal friend of mine and has a great wealth of information about football so let’s all appreciate what he has to say.
Thank you.

 Azz

Milan is obviously one of the most successful clubs in the world. No other club has more Club World Cups than we do, and only Real Madrid have more Champions League titles.

But only until recently, things have been grim for the rossoneri. We lost 15 top class players in the summer; some due to our balance sheet, and others due to age. The new system Allegri and Berlusconi have begun to impose is similar to Barcelona's La Masia. We are trying to produce our own top players instead of buying them; developing a world class youth academy where any player could turn into the next Messi or Ronaldo.

Our best youth product (in the current first team) is surely Mattia De Sciglio. He is one of the best defensive prospects in Italy. While we do have several other top young players like El Shaarawy, Balotelli, and Niang, we haven't actually had many of our academy products turn into world class players (in recent times). But with a lot of investment of both time and effort, we can have an academy of the same quality as Barcelona's, and possibly even better.

 The signs of improvement have already begun to show - not only have we beaten Barca in the Champions League with several young players, but our academy players have also shown their quality in the Viareggio Cup by reaching the final this year. They also have impressed Italy's youth national team scouts with their displays. The biggest names to watch out for, in my opinion, include Saponara, Valoti, Ganz, Fossati, Prosenik, Cristante, Lora, Petagna, and Ferreira.

If we continue to invest time and money into developing a world class youth system similar to La Masia's, then we may soon very well on top of the world again, without having to spend huge amounts of cash on big name signings from other clubs. We'd also have the option of selling some of these youth at high prices. So hopefully, Berlusconi, Allegri, Pippo Inzaghi (the youth team coach) & co. will continue their hard work in the youth department and make us a legendary team again with these new strategies in mind.

Written by Balo.