Ralph Hasenhuttl is determined to bring back Saints’ reputation as one of the best youth player developers in the world. Stars such as Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott, Luke Shaw and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain all graduated from the club’s famed academy during a golden era. Hasenhuttl developed the ‘SFC Playbook’ during the enforced break due to coronavirus which he hopes will create a solid pathway from the youth ranks into the first team.
Ralph Hasenhuttl said “I cannot say why it was so difficult in the last few years to bring through young players to the Premier League, But all over the world, this hunt for the most talented players gets tougher and tougher all the time. Big teams have changed their philosophy and don’t always want to pay big money for just popular players. They also want to take big talents. This makes it so difficult to bring good talent in the academy. This market is quite hot and that makes it difficult. What you have to do now is work with the players you have here and try to develop them as quickly as possible. If they are not individually the best players then you can develop them in a tactical way that they know immediately what they have to do when they come up to us in the first team. That helps massively to make a bigger and quicker impact in the first team. This is the way we want to go in the future. Players will come here to develop, they go with us for a few years. If they are really good, then they will leave us and go to bigger clubs. On the other side, we have the profit of having a very good player in our team for three years. This is a special way. For us, there are not a lot of alternatives because we cannot ask for £50million transfers every year. This is not possible for us. There’s an interesting way for us to go that means you sometimes lose your talent to others. But there is so much talent out there and even for us, it is possible for us to bring good players in. We will especially try to bring in young players, develop them and as a team be successful.”
