Soccer Academy Quotes

You can only advise young players to make the step to Liverpool.

I just remember playing in my school and then getting invited to go along to train with a development squad at Reading. My first training session, the manager said, 'You have to come and play with the academy girls,' so that would probably be my first footballing memory.

I think that it is advantageous to join Bayern Munich at a young age.

I was about five or six when I went to the little foundation camps. I got into the academy when I was nine, and I've gone through every age group since and into the first team.

Real Madrid wanted me to join their academy. It was a big decision to move when I was 15. It's a key age for a youngster, and you're close to your friends and family. But I moved to Madrid, and my family stayed at home. It made me mature earlier than normal. That was a very big decision, and it changed me in a positive way.

I started going training with Southampton, and they were selecting the team for the under-9s. I did a six-week trial and got in. I was quite lucky to play at a good standard from a very young age.

Ever since I was a young kid, I've been playing for an academy with scouts all over the world that are looking for top players to come in.

It's the perfect club for any footballer to develop and to grow, because as everybody knows, La Masia can give you stability; they take care of you when you leave home.

Obviously, training at Barcelona is a fantastic experience. You train alongside players like Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta, who are clearly some of the best players in the world.

Manchester City has a really good academy, and they're winning titles at all ages.

I appreciate that Bayern always wants to have the best German talents.

I was playing in a tournament in Brazil and an agent scouted me. He took me to his soccer school. The idea was he used it to scout players and anyone he thought was good enough he took over to Italy. That's what he did with me when I was 15.

Kids in Africa start kicking a ball when they are six or seven years old, if not younger. It's like baseball, basketball and football in America. If you're talented, people will find you. That's what happened with soccer. The number of academies has grown rapidly, and people are really into it.

My dad had a soccer school that he used to run, the Mark Chamberlain Soccer Academy, I used to go to that for two years until the age of seven.

I would love to have a career like Zinedine Zidane. He stopped playing, took some time, realised he liked coaching, and started working in the youth academy. I could follow a similar path.

The quality of our academy system is very high, as good as anything in the world. Around the country, lots of people in youth development are keen to get together and find a solution to that 17-to-21 age bracket and how we get those players playing.

Germany, when you're a young player, is the best. There are lots of young talents here, and people have faith in them.

Southampton have all the advantages to create good players; when you compare it to Serbia, Southampton has the better facilities. They can produce a player who is much more ready.

Novi Sad is a really beautiful city, and the club is really nice. It is one of the best youth academies in Serbia.

Chelsea is a fantastic place for young kids. They develop you, work you hard, and you can see they have top-class talent all around the world.

Fulham wanted me when I was 16. They were in the Premier League at the time with Mark Hughes, and I was close to going.

During the holidays, professional players would come and say hello to us in the academy and that really made you want to be a professional. When you saw what great conditions they lived in, it gave you even more desire.

Here at Basel is where I made my first professional steps. I came up and grew up through the FC Basel school.

Ever since I was in the Chelsea academy, I've had that awareness that people were saying I would be the first one to break through since John Terry. I believed I could, but the opportunities didn't quite come for me.

I had a totally different upbringing, totally different background, raised in Germany, small town, now I am in London taking care of 180 kids who think they are the one percent who can make it in professional football.