While Real Madrid have been signing up some of the most promising youngsters on the planet for years now, the record is pretty bad…
This is a subject that we have covered many times on the site. For almost a decade now, Real Madrid have been trying to attract the best young talents on the planet to their ranks, through an aggressive recruitment policy masterfully led by Juni Calafat, the scout and Casa Blanca specialist in nugget material. Hundreds of millions of euros have thus been spent, with one objective: to recruit future football leaders from an early age, before they join other big European clubs and are therefore much more expensive and difficult to find. . The fear of missing the new Neymar, summed up the Spanish media at the time, with Martin Odegaard as the first high-sounding name falling within this guideline of raiding young people around the globe.
Behind, a whole string of hopes followed. Players recruited far from Iberian lands, such as the Norwegian midfielder, Vinicius Jr, Rodrygo, Fede Valverde, Theo Hernandez, Mateo Kovacic, Take Kubo, Andriy Lunin, Take Kubo, Reinier, Éder Militão, Camavinga, or even Lucas Silva, as well only local hopefuls, like Marco Asensio, Alvaro Odriozola, Jesus Vallejo, Dani Ceballos, Brahim Diaz. In the end, the conclusion is rather disappointing. Of course, not everyone could logically find a place in the workforce, and there is no doubt that Pérez and his teams also bet, in part, on the possibility of cashing checks by reselling some of them. But from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, we remain on a far too high failure ratio.
Many more failures than successes
Today, only three players recruited within the framework of this policy of youthism have managed to make an important place for themselves, namely Vinicius Junior, Éder Militão and to a lesser degree Fede Valverde, who is paradoxically the one who raised the fewest hopes and which was among the least publicized of the lot. We can still add Marco Asensio and Rodrygo who, if not important players and being regular, still have regular playing time. Would they have it in a Real Madrid with a team that lives up to its status and prestige? That’s another question… It should be noted that paradoxically, it was above all the Spaniards – the Madrid leaders wanted to regain power in the selection – who had difficulty integrating.
Of course, each case is different. Some have not managed to find their place in Madrid but have managed to revive under other horizons, like Mateo Kovacic or even Alvaro Odriozola, brilliant with Fiorentina this season. Others are struggling even away from the Bernabéu. Many reasons can explain the failure of this Madrid youth policy, with one man in the line of sight: Zinedine Zidane. During his stages on the Madrid bench, he relied very little on the young people, betting on the old guard of the locker room for the most part still present in the workforce. The players are obviously also responsible, they who may have crumbled in the face of the media pressure inherent in wearing the Real Madrid shirt. Be that as it may, the balance sheet is rather negative. Some, like Eduardo Camavinga, can however still make us lie…
