And when you are done looking at this site for the Scots input on football world-wide, here are two more.
For those who literally want to trace on the ground the local development of Scots and Scottish football in our own and other countries there is the newly available and ever-expanding site of:
The Scots Football Historians' Group
And on Scottish sports history in general but inevitably including fitba', see Andy Mitchell's inestimable:
Peter the Great
- football's quiet revolutionary
Chapter Nineteen
At this distance in time, now almost a hundred years, it is difficult, since the relationship no longer exists, to assess how Northfleet was a help or, indeed, a hindrance to Spurs. Peter McWilliam clearly saw it as a help. He repeated it at Arsenal with Margate. It is possible, however, to assess how Barcelona 'B' and even La Masia has helped the Barca's First team and even when. However, let us understand one thing. Barcelona has always bought in players. Its first team has never been a Celtic of 1967, with all the players drawn from from within a radius of thirty miles of Parkhead. Indeed, but for Bobby Lennox, born in Saltcoats, it would have been half that distance. The Catalans have always cast the net wide, throughout not just Catalonia but Spain, much of Europe and Latin America and now wider still, with the result former 'B' players seem only to make up about a quarter of the First team, or three players per match at any one time. Put another way about 75% of the Barcelona First team did not pass through the 'B' team and arrived fully-formed from elsewhere. Presumably they were signed because they were seen to fit in with the Barcelona style but they were not immersed in it before arrival.
However, with regard to Barcelona 'B' itself some 300 players have passed through it since its creation. Of them just over one hundred, 35% have gone on to play at least one First team game. More have been briefly in the squad but have never made it onto the field in a First team match and are therefore not considered as having fully made the grade. In addition, of those 100 or so to have progressed from the 'B' team thirty-six so again 35% have firstly been under sixteen, when they joined the club, and secondly seemed to have passed through La Masia. However, this same 35% ignores those players in the hundred, who were locally born in Barcelona and its suburbs, went through the same coaching as the La Masia boys but had no need to stay in residential accommodation because they could live at home. Of this latter group there were just under one hundred of the 'B' team players or 32%. In addition there were another twenty-seven from towns and villages around Barcelona, including Pep Guardiola, so 9%, plus good numbers from other areas of Catalonia around Lleida and Tarragona including Victor Valdes totalling 4%. It means of 'B' team players 45% have been Catalonian. It not a particularly high figure, not even a majority. However, of those who made it into the First team 42 were born in Greater Barcelona, 39%, then add on other Catalans and graduates of La Masia and the figure rises to nearer 70%, which means essentially that on average two members of Barcelona's team on any day will have come through the youth system.
Yet a look at a number of the club's teams shows this to be clearly not so. It is an average, not an everyday. There are and have been years when the proportion of local talent is far higher and, because we are also able to look at the numbers per year that have come through from the 'B' team and indeed from La Masia, a somewhat different picture emerges.
Firstly, thirty of the thirty-six, that is four fifths, of successful La Masia graduates, an average of one per year, have come through since 1990, an indication that the residential system took a decade to be fully functioning after its creation. Before that it was one a year at most, sometimes none at all. Similarly, numbers only started to flow from the 'B' team to the First team from 1987, with before that one or two per year and again suggestion of almost two decade before it was functioning optimally.
Secondly, both 'B' team graduates into the First team and La Masia graduates through the 'B' team again into the First team have emerged very much in waves. From La Masia itself there was one small one, four graduates in two years in 1990 and 1991, a second from 1996 to 2002, thirteen in six years, and in 2011 and 2012, three in two. Equally in terms of the 'B' team its best performance years were 1990, 1995, 1996 and 1998, 2003 and 2004, 2006, 2008 to 2011 and 2014. The waves match reasonably well, which suggest understandably that the latter affects the former and vice versa.
However, First team performance also has ups and downs. In 1969-70, the first year of the 'B' team, the First team was 5th in La Liga. It has been as low as 6th and, of course, a multiple league winner. If one accepts that good 'B' team players or even younger 'C' team players will eventually improve the First team, if and when they come through, then the performance of the two teams should correlate and at Barcelona that is the case, in not one but two ways. Injections of 'B' team talent into the First team seem to improve performance, sometimes instantaneously, sometimes with a delay of a year or so. Examples are 1990, with six incomers and rise from third to league champions, in 1995 with the same result, and then in 2004, 2006 and 2008 and 2011. In addition, if for the lower team one builds in a lag as players mature of about four years , performance of the 'B' team in the lower leagues mirrors that of the First team in La Liga. It was the case from 1982-3 to 1990-91, then 1999 to 2005-6, when the First team struggled by it usual high standards and during both periods less three to four years the 'B' team was in the Spanish 3rd Division rather than the Second.
It also seems clear that some Barcelona managers perhaps understood better the value of 'B' team promotion against signings from outwith and but there is also a suggestion that others simply got lucky either because a group of particularly talented young players came through by chance or people in charge of the lower teams were really doing their job in both identifying and making the most of that talent.
Perhaps the first really to profit from the 'B' team, indeed to have got lucky not because he was a poor manager, quite the opposite, but because he had not been there and therefore made no prior contribution, was a familiar name, Terry Venables. As he began to manage the club in 1984 two players emerged from the 'B' team. He took the team from third to first place. A couple more followed over the next two years. He kept them in second spot but as he left the flow dried up and the team under Luis Aragones fell to 6th. Then in 1988 there was Johan Cruyff. Here was a man who understood both Ajax and Rinus Michels' Ajax and Barcelona versions of the system. He had seen all three in operation as a player, He had cut his managerial teeth at Ajax in the three previous years when he had show commitment to Youth restoring two teams to the structure, but now at Barcelona he had to be a little patient. Just one player came through in his first year, one more the next, then five in the third. Cruyff took the team to second place, then third and then first, where it would remain for four years. True in the last two years of Cruyff's eight year tenure results dropped off a little. The team fell to fourth but in his final year six came up from the 'B' team. Results improved a little and more still under his successor for a year, Bobby Robson, another who not just knew the principles of the system, through Vic Buckingham at West Bromwich, but was able also to draw on twelve new faces in two years, a complete team, which under Robson's successor matured well. That successor in 1997 was Louis van Gaal, in whose three years in charge Barcelona won La Liga twice and was runner-up once.
Van Gaal also came from or rather via Ajax. However, his time there was mainly as a manager and only very briefly a player, with no First team appearances. It suggests he, although he was aware of a very similar system, he was not fully immersed and events since seem to back that up. They also suggests that he got a little lucky. In his three years at the club he had the advantage of ten promotees, after which numbers dropped off and results with them despite rather than because of managers, who came and went effectively randomly.
Order was only restored in 2003 with the arrival of Frank Rijkaard. Here was another man, who, perhaps unlike van Gaal, again intuitively understood the system, but in his case first indirectly and then directly, twice over. As regards the former his father, Hermann, also a professional footballer had been at Ajax as a youth player. In terms of the latter Frank himself had started at the club as a central defender behind Cruyff, whilst the latter was still a player, and had been switched to midfield in 1985, when Cruyff ceased to play and became manager.
The year before Rijkaard had arrived at Barcelona three players had been introduced from the 'B' team. The First team struggled, under a briefly returned van Gaal and then Rady Antic, finishing only sixth. Two more graduates were added in Rijkaard's first year, then four in the second, nine, almost a full team, in three years and bedding in. The first team finished second, then first, then first once more. And still the flow continued. After a year in 2005 when none came through six did in 2006 and three more, again the best part of a team. Results stuttered a little once more. Barcelona finished second, then third, yet, again as natural bedding-in took place, it was hardly a disaster,. It was, however, not fast enough for the club's power's that were.
It was 2008. Rijkaard was sacked, as unlucky as the next manager to come in was doubly fortunate. He was Pep Guardiola and in the four years before he decided to move on would not just finish in top position in La Liga three times and second once but also had been able to move up an unprecedented twenty-four 'B' team products, players he knew well having himself just come from being "B" team manager.
However, it is a flow that is now again dropping off, with consequences, which may be beginning to show in Barcelona's results. Perhaps it is because the players are not there. The supply had simply dried up. It may even be because of a reluctance of managers to have followed Guardiola to risk bring them players. Yet both seem unlikely, given the proven quality of the product over the previous twenty of so years. Indeed, in the case of Luis Enrique they are demonstrably false. Not only did he promote four in his first year as First team manager but as 'B' team manager from 2008 to 2011 under Guardiola, when large numbers moved up, he had been the one supplying.
It suggests another reason to explore which let us start not with the negative but the positive. When Pep Guardiola took over as First team manager his enthusiasm for promotion of 'B' team players must surely have been based on what he knew from just having been the equivalent at "B" ream level the previous year under Rijkaard. However, a year is not enough time to develop a player. That, according to Stefan Kovacs, the man who held the fort at Camp Nou whilst Rinus Michels was working with the Dutch national team from 1971 to 1973 and who also knew the system from the inside, takes,
“eight to ten years from child to man”.
In other words a twenty-two year old enters the system at fourteen year and from the 'B' team, joined at eighteen, to First team is about another four years. It means that players promoted in Guardiola's 'B' team year, 2007-8, entered that team in 2003. Equally those achieving the same from Enrique's 'B' teams into Guardiola's First teams had joined it between 2004 and 2007, leading to the incontrovertible conclusion that what Guardiola and Enrique had found must have been at least partially formed already and by others or other.
Moreover, Guardiola's obvious enthusiasm for the "B" team both before and during his manager-ship could only have come from his time in it as a player from 1990 to 1992. And in those years the 'B' was managed by the same person. His name is Quique Costas, who finally stepped down in 2007, not dismissed but at the age of sixty quietly retiring.
Now not only had Costas managed the 'C' team and been 'B' manager on two other occasions, for seven years from 1989 to 1996, and two from 2001 to 2003, he had also been a Barcelona player, a defender, but not one that had come through the system. He is a Galician, born in Vigo, who between 1965 and 1971 had played one fewer games for his home-town club than he would between 1971 and 1980 for the Catalans, three hundred and thirty-nine in all. He would also play for Spain thirteen times. And his arrival at Camp Nou coincided exactly with that of Rinus Michels and his time there was spent playing behind Cruyff. He understood the system from, if not the originator, McWilliam, then two of his greatest, if unknowing disciples. In fact he not only knew the system from the inside, that is on the field of play, but he also bought into it as something little-by-little to pass on to future players, players that would make a significant, perhaps vital contribution to his adopted club's success over thirty years.
Costas had managed the Barcelona 'C' team from 1987-89. It had been promoted from the Third Division to the second. He kept it there, safely in mid-table, until the system was reorganised, the 'C' and the 'B' teams would have been in the same divisions so the 'C' had to drop down one. He was then promoted to manage for the first time the 'B', which had been struggling. It had dropped a division but he took it straight up, keeping it there until in 1996 in the last year of Cruyff's manager-ship. And in the seven years from 1989 his tenure would produce players approximately from 1993 to 2000, when twenty five came through, more than three a year, twenty-one in six years or more than four a season, a figure higher than ever before. Yet in 1996 he was moved on perhaps because the team, having been in the upper reaches of the division had fallen to mid-table. Perhaps even Cruyff had judged that Costas had been lucky with the players he had inherited and so eased him out
However, in retrospect it looks like a mistake, a rare misunderstanding on the part of the Dutchman or even Nunez, the then club president. First of all, six of those promoted had been in the final year with the number until then building year-on-year. Secondly, a year after this first Costas departure the 'B' team had once more dropped a division, to the Third, finishing nineteenth of twenty. True that year six more had moved up to the Barcelona First team, twelve in two year, perhaps leaving not much left. True too that rebound was immediate, with in 1998 Barcelona 'B' team finishing first and moving back to the Second Division, but the next season, 1999, having finished twenty of twenty it was again relegated. And there was worse to come. Even in the lower division the 'B' team did not do particularly well, 11th and 9th in the two following seasons. Moreover the numbers being promoted to the First team, thus weakening the 'B' team, could not be blamed. They fell and combined, perhaps over not just one but two years, with some poor signings the consequences were inevitable. Results suffered, that is until in 2001, when the former Barcelona stalwart, Carles Rexach, player with and then assistant manager under Cruyff and once more understanding the system became manager for a year. At the end of that season the 'B' team was once more top of its division, which may have been the Rexach effect but then there was one more factor. Quique Costas had been brought back. His return was for two seasons, during which time his team, the 'B' team, having finished in pole position the first year, did not accept promotion and was second the following year.
However, the World including football clubs moves in mysterious ways. At that point Costas was once more moved on. Perhaps by the incoming manager, the nothing if not enigmatic Frank Rijkaard, again he had been judged lucky, a case of fortune striking twice presumably, but surely it must have been looking increasingly unlikely. It looked even less likely when in 2003, four years after Costas first departure four were promoted from the 'B' to the first team then four more the following year. And it would look still less likely with the players coming through perhaps taking a little longer to mature, five years instead of four, when in 2006 the number was six with two more the following year. Possibly it had been simply that Rijkaard had wanted his own man in place but, whatever the reason, the result was that the 'B' team in 2004 finished 8th in its division. Then in 2005 it was 11th and mid-table, furthermore no players had been moved up for the first time since 1986, and finally the penny dropped, vis. there was a correlation between the success of the 'B' team and its manager. Even with Rijkaard still in charge, there had to be a change of mind and at the beginning of the 2005-6 season Costas was called upon once more.
Again the change was almost instantaneous. By 2006 the 'B' team had rebounded to sixth in its league. True, as Costas retired finally at the end of 2006-7 season, but depleted by a total of eight promotees in two years, it did drop a division once more. Yet with players Costas must have introduced, in 2008 it again both bounced right back and also provided eight more for the First team squad. Moreover, in 2009 it not only climbed another division, to the Second, but stayed there, providing seven more players, in two seasons fifteen in total, more than a team, almost a squad, only beginning to struggle and eventually dropping a division, two managers further on, under Sacristan and not recovering under either of those, Vinyals and Lopez, who then followed him. In fact in the four seasons following Costas' retirement, the period when his products would be expected to mature the total number of promoted players was not only twenty-four, more than two whole team's worth, more than half a team a year, but the numbers since have somewhat surprisingly fallen away badly.
But why the surprise you may ask, to which the reply is as follows. The man to have stepped on his retirement into Costas shoes was Pep Guardiola. He, as is often pointed out, had become a First team player under the managership of Cruyff. He understood the system. But perhaps more importantly he was also a Costas player both through the 'C' team from 1987 to 1989 and then in 1990 from the 'B' team, whilst in the First team he also profited from other Costas players coming through alongside him. And it also has to be said Guardiola was at every stage a huge beneficiary of Costas' coaching, as a youth player, as a 'B' team player and has since had a reputation bolstered, even it might be said inflated, in his one year as 'B' team manager and four in charge of the First team by association and inclusion not with and of his own 'B' team coaching products, of whom there were, admittedly due to length of tenure, virtually none but those of Quique Costas. On any of those bases alone the maintenance of a strong youth, "C" and "B" team structure as an imperative would have been more than understandable. Yet no such imperative seems to have existed.
Moreover, like Guardiola, his 'B' and eventual First team successor, Enrique, had also benefited from Costas products not least by playing alongside them, Guardiola included, in winning La Liga in 1998 and 1999. Yet, again the will seems not to have been there. In part it could be explained by Enrique himself not being a Costas product. He was an import, having played for Gijon and Real Madrid before the Barcelona first team. Nor had he played under Cruyff. He had joined Barcelona in 1996, the year the Dutchman had stepped down. Nor close to him did he employ Costas or Cruyff products. His assistant was Juan Carlos Unzue, a goalkeeper, who had come from Osasuna, played five games Barcelona and in fact then was then moved out by Cruyff and his auxiliary coach was a Catalan but one who never played for the club. Indeed, any one of these observations might be enough to question whether, indeed why, he should really understand and be thoroughly convinced of club system that he might have consider partially alien. They might even explain why in the four years after he became 'B' manager in 2008, that is in 2012, there were once more no graduates and four years after he moved on, that is in 2015, promotions in 2019 dwindled to virtually nothing. Yet there are three caveats. Firstly, in 2014 four players did emerge. Secondly, Enrique for four years played alongside Gardiola, surely enough, in the nicest way and given what he saw after, to infect anyone. Thirdly, those selfsame reservations would seem to apply to Eusebio Sacristan, who followed Enrique as 'B' manager and seems to have produced even less, yet cannot because his Barcelona playing career had been entirely during the managership of Cruyff. Perhaps the best that can be said is the jury is out in much the same way as the McWilliam legacy appears out the door.