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10 years of FIF
It is, but its a good starting point - for the most part, markets do act as (reasonably) efficient markets - the room for arbitrage is a lot lower in the stock market compared to other markets for example, and you look at pertubations against the efficient market, rather than assuming the entire market is completely inefficient
at the level where guys are playing professional, top flight football, they've probably spent most of the last decade being scouted. Lautaro or Bastoni as examples, they spent their early years playing in Argentina/Italy-U15 through to U-21 for the most part. Those competitions will be *heavily* scouted - it doesnt exactly take a genius to realise that *literally every single italian born member* of the Italy national team barring 1 or 2 were regulars in the Italy youth squads before going onto the first team. I looked out of interest at the Spanish team (at random) - same deal there. Only one player wasnt a regular at least at SOME level of the Spain youth, except Laporte (who was in France youth obviously).
It's pretty obvious - if you want to pick the superstars of next year, you look at U15-U21 of each major national team. You'll find pretty much every superstar by scouting those teams/tournaments. Every single Ballon d'Or winner this millennium (as far back as I looked) was a regular in their national youth side.
Now, dont get me wrong, the conclusions those scouts have come to will obviously differ heavily - the ability to spot talent is where scouts get paid. But I'd wager any player we're realistically signing, or have signed in recent years who went on to be something (e.g. Barella, Bastoni, Lautaro, etc) were on the records/databases of every single major club in Europe. Even if some of those reports were wrong and suggested the player wouldnt make it, etc.
Scouting starts at like age 9-12, like I've said over and over - football is a harsh reality. The idea of an unknown coming out of the woodworks aged 18, 19, 20 without any real first team experience or professional reputation is probably 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 now.
The point being - its not like 'hey lets scout Croatia, no other big club does that', its more 'Do I trust Salvatore Cerrone to make the call on a youth talent to be a superstar?'
And, just based on our track record, my answer to that is a big fat fucking no. Colidio for 8m, Tassi for 2.5m, the list goes on. If we used the biomass from our academy to power renewable energy, at least we'd be making some use of that shit.
at the level where guys are playing professional, top flight football, they've probably spent most of the last decade being scouted. Lautaro or Bastoni as examples, they spent their early years playing in Argentina/Italy-U15 through to U-21 for the most part. Those competitions will be *heavily* scouted - it doesnt exactly take a genius to realise that *literally every single italian born member* of the Italy national team barring 1 or 2 were regulars in the Italy youth squads before going onto the first team. I looked out of interest at the Spanish team (at random) - same deal there. Only one player wasnt a regular at least at SOME level of the Spain youth, except Laporte (who was in France youth obviously).
It's pretty obvious - if you want to pick the superstars of next year, you look at U15-U21 of each major national team. You'll find pretty much every superstar by scouting those teams/tournaments. Every single Ballon d'Or winner this millennium (as far back as I looked) was a regular in their national youth side.
Now, dont get me wrong, the conclusions those scouts have come to will obviously differ heavily - the ability to spot talent is where scouts get paid. But I'd wager any player we're realistically signing, or have signed in recent years who went on to be something (e.g. Barella, Bastoni, Lautaro, etc) were on the records/databases of every single major club in Europe. Even if some of those reports were wrong and suggested the player wouldnt make it, etc.
Scouting starts at like age 9-12, like I've said over and over - football is a harsh reality. The idea of an unknown coming out of the woodworks aged 18, 19, 20 without any real first team experience or professional reputation is probably 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 now.
The point being - its not like 'hey lets scout Croatia, no other big club does that', its more 'Do I trust Salvatore Cerrone to make the call on a youth talent to be a superstar?'
And, just based on our track record, my answer to that is a big fat fucking no. Colidio for 8m, Tassi for 2.5m, the list goes on. If we used the biomass from our academy to power renewable energy, at least we'd be making some use of that shit.
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