benjamin86
Established Member
I think that these cooperations or feeder teams just don't work out (as easily) as we tend to think. The theory is easy: Form this sort of cooperation and club A can send its top talents to club B, who are happy to get some of them. But I think the reality and practicality of that is way more difficult.
It is harder to incorporate talent instead of proven quality, for big clubs and smaller clubs, as the first thing you look at is current performance. The only "easy" situation to do it is if you're in kind of no man's land. Teams in the middle of the table neither in punching distance of international spots and at the same time not in danger of relegation are the most likely to incorporate talent, as it's just the lowest risk situation for tempering with current performance in favour of giving game time to youngsters.
Even if e.g. Girona belong to the same onwners as City, there's surely very little interest in risking them playing in the 1st or 2nd division just so they will field more youngsters they loaned out from the parent club.
Young players need a working environment, at club, squad and performance level to grow. Very, very few youngsters come in and pull a relegation battling side up a few levels. A very good example is Timo Werner, you came into the fold of Stuttgart's first team as a massive talent, but was almost instantly tasked and burdened with the hopes of scoring the team out of the relegation zone. That's a massive burden for an 18 year old player and realistically something he has very little chance of succeeding in, considering most young players struggle with consistency - which is absolutely ok. They need a working architecture around them to flourish.
Our example Werner crumbled under that burden, left Stuttgart after they got relegated for Leipzig and instantly exploded in the vastly more settled environment of Red Bull.
So even if a smaller club is owned by the same people as a bigger club, it's in no one's interest to hazard that smaller club's performance and status by making them play 5 loaned out parent club youngsters. At the most you could probably have 3 at them at your disposal and work on properly incorporating them and giving them ample game time, but mostly it's even less, I'd tend to think.
You'd also have to completely align the two club's philosophies in terms of recruiting, development, manager choice, etc.
I think it's testament to the questionable nature of cooperations and feeder clubs that the only example of this working out more than it does not is the Red Bull franchise, which's standout feature is that all of the clubs in it are run by Rangnick and Mintzlaff, but at the same time are still kind of run as separate entities - testament to this being that players aren't mostly loaned out from Leipzig to Salzburg, but that Salzburg buys them and if they are ready for the next step it will be tried (mostly successfully) to keep them in the franchise, they will be sold on to big sister Leipzig. You should also keep in mind that these clubs are so entangled that their academies are basically one academy feeding both clubs. This kind of setup is a very longterm process and it's not surprising very few of these cooperations besides the very thought out, planned out Red Bull franchise work out.
I suppose New York would make more sense than Girona as there's no relegation? But yeah you're probably right in it being much more difficult than i considered.
I'm interested to see how the Udinese and Watford relationship evolves, if it will eventually end up something similar to Red Bull or continue as is with Watford getting the fruits of the Pozzo scouting network to air in the premiership shop window and sending their lesser players to Udinese.