by Rockape » Sun Mar 14, 2021 11:00 am
Today’s Telegraph:
Academy heroes steering Arsenal to a bright future
Home-grown graduates Saka and Smith Rowe are now offering a glimpse of club’s next generation
Sam Dean
Everyone at the Arsenal academy could see that the 14-year-old Bukayo Saka was a promising player. He had the pace, the strength and a ruthless edge in front of goal that made him impossible to ignore, even at such a young age. What was not so clear, though, was how good he would become and why he was so dominant even at that early stage of his footballing journey.
Young Gunners: Emile Smith Rowe (left) and Bukayo Saka
Young Gunners: Emile Smith Rowe (left) and Bukayo Saka
“He was a huge kid,” says Andries Jonker, Arsenal’s former academy manager. “He was stronger than anybody else, faster than anybody else. He hit the ball through the net. The question was: is this physical power or is this the ability or talent to become a really good player?”
Five years later, time has provided an emphatic answer. Saka’s progress has been so relentless that it is hard to believe there were any doubts at all. As Arsenal prepare to face Tottenham Hotspur today in the north London derby, the academy graduate will be one of the first names on Mikel Arteta’s teamsheet, safely installed in their attack after emerging as, perhaps, their most important player this season.
It has been some rise for the teenager, as well as some triumph for the club.
For all their recent struggles – the slide out of the Champions League, the subsequent financial nightmare and the chaos of the Unai Emery era – it is the academy that is providing hope as they look to take back control of north London from their greatest rivals.
Saka is the leading light, but he is not alone. Alongside him for Arsenal’s best performances this season has been Emile Smith Rowe, who will be in contention to start today if he is deemed fully fit after recent injuries.
At 19 and 20 respectively, Saka and Smith Rowe are showing the way for their club and demonstrating what can be achieved with proper investment and coaching at youth level.
There are others, too. Reiss Nelson, Joe Willock, Eddie Nketiah and Ainsley Maitland-Niles have all been in Arteta’s plans at various stages this season, and all have made significant contributions to the first team.
“When I left at the end of 2019, at the beginning of that season we had six academy players graduate to the first team,” says Steve Morrow, the former head of academy recruitment. “That had never been done before. It is incredible. It is many years of work that has gone into it. When you look at the final result, with Emile and Bukayo and the others that have come through, that is a culmination of work and it does not happen by accident.”
So how have they done it? A key part of the process is not just recruiting these youngsters from across London (Smith Rowe, from Croydon, joined when he was 10, while Saka, from Ealing, arrived at the age of eight), but also keeping them at Hale End, the club’s academy. In the scrap for talent, retaining your best players throughout their teenage years is no easy task.
“You have to work very hard at making the players feel like they are such an important part of the club that they don’t want to leave, that Arsenal is in their blood,” Morrow says. “So when they have that interest from other clubs and the possibility of going to Europe and all sorts of things tempting them, you are in a good position to persuade them to stay. That was certainly the case with Bukayo and Emile.”
One of those clubs who hoped to snatch Smith Rowe away from Arsenal were today’s opponents. “He played against Tottenham for the under-18s and he really stood out,” says David Webb, Tottenham’s former head of elite potential identification, who eventually got his man when he took Smith Rowe to Huddersfield Town on loan in January 2020.
“We tried to bring him in [at Tottenham] before he signed his scholarship at Arsenal, but unfortunately we missed out. He fitted the way that Mauricio Pochettino played and, even at 16, we were looking at him as a player who could progress into the first team.”
This is not to say everyone at Arsenal viewed Smith Rowe as a potential first-team star. He was not, Jonker says, as “outstanding” a talent as Nelson, for example, but he was dependable. “You could always count on the contribution of Emile,” says Jonker, who was the club’s academy manager from 2014 to 2017.
‘You have to work hard to make sure they know they are an important part of the club’
As for Saka, those doubts about his physical advantages, and how much of an edge they were giving him in youth football, evaporated as soon as he entered the first-team environment. Surrounded by better players, Saka did not need to bully his way past defenders or overpower them. Instead he could just play, linking with his team-mates and demonstrating there is so much more to his game than speed and strength.
“Bukayo was always really physically,” Morrow says. “I could see the technical ability and the composure he had in tight areas. That really came out as soon as he started training with the first team.
“He was able to perform better with better players around him, combining with them. Once he got into that environment, he just stayed there. Even for me, it was a surprise how well he did so quickly. He was able to maintain a really high level of performance, and he was able to make the right decisions. When it came to those moments in the final third, when you have a chance to make that special contribution, he was able to do it.”
The coaching of Freddie Ljungberg and Arteta has allowed Saka to develop from there. The same can be said of Smith Rowe, although he took a slightly different path by going on loan to Huddersfield and then RB Leipzig.
The first-team coaches will rightly be credited for having the courage to pick the youngsters, but these are successes that have been years in the making. Together, Saka and Smith Rowe are leading a new generation and promising a brighter future for a club who need their energy and optimism.
