Before the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008 transformed Manchester City into a European superpower, things were very different for the youngsters growing up with dreams of playing for the first team.
Thomas Krucken is City’s youth academy director, but for a year in the early 2000s he was a foundation phase coach — the term used for those who oversee ages 5-11 — working with young players including Shaun Wright-Phillips, Kasper Schmeichel and Kieran Trippier. The 47-year-old has one particular memory of how life used to be.
“Jim Cassell [City’s former academy director] asked me to do a training session and I wanted to do something special,” Krucken tells ESPN. “So I went to a pet shop in the city centre and brought sticks from a bird cage and built this coordination ladder. It’s a bit different now.”
Krucken spoke to ESPN from his office overlooking the pristine pitches at the City Football Academy (CFA), a short walk from the Etihad Stadium. The days of running sessions at Platt Lane Sports Complex in southeast Manchester are over. City can now offer young footballers state-of-the-art facilities at the CFA and a link-up with local private school St. Bede’s College, which would normally cost more than £14,000 a year to attend.
Overall, however, the goal of producing professional footballers remains the same as it was 25 years ago.
“We had nothing,” says Krucken. “But we developed players at a Premier League level. The facilities have changed and now we have everything we need to develop top players.”
Krucken, back at the club after a spell as VfB Stuttgart’s head of youth development, is now in charge of one of Europe’s premier talent factories. Everyone knows about Phil Foden, associated with City since the age of four and now English football’s reigning player of the year, but the production line doesn’t stop there.
City ended the first game of their preseason tour of the U.S. against Celtic with nine academy graduates on the pitch. Four — Rico Lewis, Nico O’Reilly, James McAtee and Oscar Bobb — were in manager Pep Guardiola’s starting XI for the Community Shield against Manchester United in August.
Guardiola’s set to raid the academy again when he selects his team for the Carabao Cup tie at Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday. Guardiola picked O’Reilly, McAtee and 16-year-old Kaden Braithwaite against Watford in the last round, and has already stated his intention to “play the second team” against Spurs. Braithwaite was handed his debut after training with the first team just once, a session that took place the day before the game.
The benefit in Guardiola looking to the academy for new players is that, from an early age, City’s young players are taught the basics of what it takes to play in his team and so the transition period can be relatively short.
“Coming through the academy, you learn about how a City player should play,” Bobb told ESPN in April. “Things like where you’re supposed to move. Obviously, when you get to the first team it’s a different level. Pep gets that new players won’t know certain things or won’t have the mind of a Bernardo Silva. He accepts that and he wants to teach me, so it’s really nice.
“The likes of Phil Foden and Rico Lewis have shown it’s possible to make it.”
Bobb and McAtee impressed so much in the summer that the club decided against signing a replacement for Julián Álvarez, who left for Atlético Madrid in an £81 million deal. Bobb has since suffered a broken leg that will keep him out until the new year, but McAtee is benefitting from Álvarez’s departure.
“He’s a player who comes from the academy,” Guardiola said on McAtee’s prospects of playing first team football this season. “He knows all the process and how he moves in the pockets. When you find players in the small spaces that attack the final thirds, have a sense of goal, it is difficult to find these sorts of players. McAtee has that quality and that’s why I said to [director of football] Txiki [Begiristain] in the beginning of the season, I don’t want to loan him or sell him. I need him.”
McAtee, 22, has made 12 senior appearances for City since making his debut as a teenager in 2021, but spent the past two seasons on loan at Sheffield United; one in the Championship and one in the Premier League. He scored his first senior goal in the 4-0 win over Slovan Bratislava in the Champions League earlier this month. With Álvarez gone and Bobb injured, he’s got the opportunity to establish himself in the first-team squad. At least for now.
The reality for young players at City is that, at any moment, an expensive new player can arrive to fill your spot in the squad. Lewis broke through during the 2022-23 campaign playing at both full-back and in midfield. The following summer City spent a combined £161m on two midfielders (Mateo Kovacic and Matheus Nunes) and a full-back (Josko Gvardiol).
“It’s something you have to deal with,” said Bobb. ”It’s one of the reasons there was scepticism about me coming here at 16. But it shows that you don’t just have to perform well, you have to perform very well to get that chance. I remember some of my closest friends were asking if I was sure and saying it was going to be very tough to even get a sniff of first-team football. But for me, just getting close to it was an opportunity of a lifetime.
1:45
Guardiola: Man City won’t be surprised when I leave
Pep Guardiola speaks about Txiki Begiristain’s departure from Man City and reflects on his own future at the club.
“What can be a misconception is that the manager and the staff don’t see players differently if they’ve been brought for a big transfer fee or come through the academy. It’s just two players and the one who’s better in training or fits the team plays.”
While Bobb and McAtee are hopeful of being part of City’s present, academy staff are already looking well ahead. Part of Krucken’s philosophy is to create “players of the future.” In layman’s terms, it means anticipating what the game will look like in 10 years and producing players with the right attributes so that a 10-year-old in 2024 will be ready — in theory, anyway — to play for City’s first team in 2034.
“The speed of the game has increased: if you compare a game with a game 20 years ago, it’s very different,” says Krucken. “This is our idea of creating the future player because we are sure the speed of the game will keep increasing. We have to adapt to what a player will need in the future. That means thinking now about what an under-10 player will need in 10 years. This is always the challenge for an academy.”
Not everyone who passes through City’s academy over the next decade will play for the first team. The level required to break through at a club that wants to win the Champions League every year is extremely high and for some it will be out of reach. City, though, have become masters at ensuring that those who don’t make the grade earn moves to other clubs, often for big fees. Sources have told ESPN that the club has agreed deals which could total £276m for academy graduates over the last five years alone. This summer, Taylor Harwood-Bellis joined Southampton for £20m while Liam Delap signed for Ipswich Town for £15m. Cole Palmer moved to Chelsea for £42.5m in 2023.
It means that if City do eventually choose to use the transfer market to replace Álvarez, there’s money to spend without having to walk the tightrope of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules.
“Look at the generation from the academy years ago with Jadon Sancho, Cole Palmer, Brahim Díaz,” said Guardiola. “A lot of players that are shining have come from there. That’s why we are really pleased with how the academy worked in the past. Hopefully it can continue to do it for the club.”
Those players have gone on to make an impact elsewhere. The ones still hoping to be part of City’s future will get their next chance to impress against Tottenham this week.
