“It’s crazy when you think about it,” says Ryan Cardwell, former youth scout at Liverpool and Southampton.
“In what other kind of world would 15 and 16-year-olds be spoken about in the media like this?”
This summer alone, all six of the Premier League’s wealthiest clubs either signed a highly-rated academy player from another, or lost a youngster to a direct rival.
“It is such a competitive market,” Cardwell explains. “There are now tens of transfers between the elite academies every summer, when it used to be the case that if you were already at one of those, you would likely stay the course.
“The race for talent is huge – you look at what teams are spending on transfers for senior players and it’s enormous, so if you can spot a player earlier and offset some of that financial risk, you’re going to do so.”
Some inside football claim that the transfer of Rio Ngumoha – the now 18-year-old winger who was called up to this month’s senior England squad – from Chelsea to Liverpool at the age of 15 in 2024 ushered in a new era of competition for academy players among the nation’s elite.
One of the major factors is Brexit. Before 2021 English clubs were allowed to sign academy players over the age of 16 who held European Union passports.
Since the UK left the EU, foreign players cannot join English clubs until they reach 18.
“Heathrow and Gatwick [airports] on a Friday night were inundated with scouts going to other countries to look for young players”, says Caldwell.
“Belgium and the Netherlands were full of scouts for Premier League clubs.
“Now it’s the competition between English clubs that has increased, looking at each other’s players, including the old-school ‘top six’ but also the likes of Southampton, Aston Villa, and Fulham.”
Young players have further added financial value – youth signings don’t count towards the Premier League’s squad cost ratio rules, and any future sale counts as ‘pure profit’ in club accounts.
Advances in video technology and data analysis mean more young players are being identified, tracked and approached by rival clubs than ever before.