http://www.fcbluewings.com/eng/news/news_view.asp?seq=79 Should be interesting to see what comes of this in the next few years.
Great stuff, man. Just had a few questions regarding administrative technicalities: 1) How many players will be offered full-time contracts with the club 2) and for how long? I ask because, I'm rather skeptical of youth systems under the current format. I believe that the K-League Assoc permits only 2~3 players to be contracted to the senior side, while the rest, who didn't make the cut, must be entered into the draft. So in essence, K-League clubs will make investments that they won't even have a return on! Not a single penny! Sorry for the rant but it just seems that its "youth development" for show.
Didn't Suwon already have a system in running? Not the type of youth program we are thinking of, but similar ones ran in Seoul and Seongnam.
From what I understand, they had sponsored a high school team before. But this is actually going to be their team. They hire the coaches and make all of the decisions now. They are hiring teachers to help the students out also. They are looking for an English teacher if any you out there is interested. Svasco, I will get those answers for you. I am not sure as of yet, but will let you know as soon as I do. It would be interesting to see if those 2-3 players were the minimum because I have a hard time believing that even the K-league would be that stupid to put such a hinderence on their own program.
Unless they're changing the rule for next year's draft, Vasco is right, although I'm not sure about the exact number of players clubs are allowed to sign from their youth teams. It just doesn't make any sense to me why they're putting a restriction on number of players clubs can sign from their own youth teams, all because of this draft system. I mean, if that's what they're gonna do, they can at least come up with a system designed to have these clubs be compensated for losing players they developed to other clubs. And there are thousands of high schools and colleges that aren't being sponsored by K-League clubs. Kids who graduate from those schools should be more than enough for each year's draft. Kids who belong to any of the K-League clubs' youth teams should be exempt from the draft, unless they're released by the club. Then again, they should really consider getting rid of the entire draft system altogether. A salary cap for players who've been in the league for 3 years or less (if not for all players) would be more effective, imo.
Cheers I know for a fact that once a player is signed from the draft, they're obligated to play for the club for 3 years. I'm assuming it takes about 3 years to prepare an 18 year old to be professionally-fit to play, but after those 3 years, the kids going to be a free-agent and leave the club. So technically, instead of the clubs choosing the players they want, or at least, can play to begin with, they're stuck with what they got, unable to use these players because the coach has to train the player to fit the coach's style of play. This is lose-lose for everyone.
Doesn't that rule only apply to players that were drafted in the 1st round? Because Bae Ki-jong was on his way to becomming a FA when Daejon traded him to Suwon for couple of young players in return. Anyways, something definitely needs to be done about the youth system including the draft system. Starting from '09, the league association is requiring all clubs to have U18 squads, so hopefully they come up with something to solve the problem by the end of this season. Or next season at the latest.
So the official rule, that won't be changing anytime soon, is that each team can only sign 3 players from their youth team to the first team. This is not including players that are drafted. So, from my skewed understanding, I believe that you could sign your best 3 players before the draft and then put everyone else up for grabs. Not sure though. One of the guys in suwons front office brought up the point to me that the chances of even finding 3 good players out of any given youth team might be a challenge in itself. Guess that makes sense. We will learn a lot more as things work themselves out. I also found out that the reason Suwon didn't go crazy in the transfer market was to put money, around 3 or 4 million us dollars, into the youth team to give them the best training possible. I am excited to see how this turns out. Since I am a football newbie, can someone explain to me how different this system is than one used in the Netherlands or England?
For instance, take Ajax, who runs youth development, under a professional enviornment, for minors, aged 8 through 18. Through each age group, the number of students, or prospects, decline as they get older. For instance, they may select roughly 300 kids from ages 8-10, make cuts, select 200 of them for ages 12-14, and 100 for U-15, 50 for U-16, and so on. By the time the first group of kids reach the age of 18, Ajax will have a pool of "primed" prospects; players tailored to their taste and of course, players that are physically and technically superior to those that were without professional training. Hence, the club, at maximum, could invest 10 years to a single player. The main difference is that European leagues are not run on a "draft system." The minute these inventory of players are good enough, they become free agents; they could be offered a contract by Ajax, or simply, could be sold to bigger teams around Europe. For most small to medium sized clubs, creating and maintaining a superior inventory of players, are probably their main source of revenue. On the flip-side, lets take Suwon. Suwon, for the greater good of Korean football, could invest in their youth system. However, they're forced to select only three for their senior side. That's not the problem. The problem is that they will simply have to give up their remaining inventory of investments "for free" to the K-League draft. It would be acceptable if those three players could turn out to be world-class stars, but I find that highly unlikely and improbable. It appears that the K-League re-implemented the draft because stars like Park Ju-young, started inflating the free agent market, hence choking the smaller publicly-traded clubs, such as Incheon or Daejeon. These clubs couldn't afford to pay millions for an 18-year-old. But to the contrary, I believe that it becomes a greater opportunity for them because if they fine-tuned their youth development process, they could be "selling" 100's of players from their inventory for millions. A team like Suwon doesn't really need a youth development program to stay competitive. They can simply buy players from the smaller clubs. All they gotta do is ask Samsung.
not sure how to rep, but would have if I knew how. I think they took my button away. Anyway, thanks for the great info. I understand that Suwon could buy whoever they want, but that isn't for the greater good of Korean football which is what this should all be about. I was going to ask specifically about Ajax because I knew they had one of the best in the world, I just didn't know why that was. I wonder if Suwon could bring someone over from the that club to show us how to do things. But then again, whats the point if the KFA is just going tell us how to do everything. I hate being negative and tried to find the good in things, but it seems like this group of people running the KFA is just a bunch of ajushis who do things the old-style Korean way.