Defending Arsenal’s Poaching of Barcelona’s academy players

Barcelona have a such a conveyor belt of talent, they’ll just keep producing quality youngsters. It’s not like Barca get 12/13 year olds from South America or anything. In Spain, all the best players end up at Madrid or Barca because there are no distance restrictions and they can recruit from all over the country. They use that to their advantage while English clubs use their own laws to their advantage when signing foreign youngsters. Didn’t Barca in effect “poach” Messi from his Argentinian club at a very young age because Barca offered him an expensive hormone treatment that his Argie club couldn’t offer? If anything, grabbing 12-13yr olds is probably worse than 16-17 academy level players. Do Barca tap young players up? Of course. Kids from all over Spain and the occasional little lad from Argentina. They can go fuck themselves. Get over it Barca. Anyone who thinks signing a player at 16 when he has no contract obligation is poaching him is seriously deluded.

Arsenal Youth System

Wenger is a genius for spotting talent. I mean look at Cesc. Wenger has come in and set up a good scouting network and concentrated on bringing in young players with potential rather than big names on big wages. He has also had great success by capturing the likes of  Fabregas and making superstars out of them. Wenger is seen by many people who follow football as the benchmark for spotting young talent, to some extent this is deserved after all. You can spot a Wenger type player a mile away -great technique, really comfortable on the ball, and good athletes. Wenger has the ability to spot talents all over the world. Toure and Fabregas are two notable ones. Arsenal have a good set up and it has been excellent since Wenger has been at the club. So his influence is clearly there. Wenger is a fantastic manager with a great eye for youth. I have a lot of respect for Wenger and what he has achieved for us.