Southampton’s production line shows no sign of slowing despite departures
The England under-21 defender Matt Targett is the symbol of a breakthrough in talent identification that has delighted everyone at St Mary’s and the Premier League
Matt Targett, who was spotted in an Eastleigh primary school at the age of eight, is the ‘perfect illustration of the Southampton journey’ according to Les Reed. Photograph: Sascha
Les Reed is not generally given to overstatement but the Southampton executive director is happy to make an exception. “Matt Targett has gone from base camp to the top of Everest,” Reed says. “His is the perfect illustration of the Southampton journey.”
Targett’s story is one that fires the dreams of boys across England. He enrolled in an after-school club at Cherbourg primary in Eastleigh, which was run by the Saints Foundation, and, when his ability was noted, he was recommended to one of Southampton’s 25 development centres.
From there, as an eight-year-old, Targett was taken on by the club’s academy and, having progressed through every age group, he made his first-team bow last season. The 19-year‑old left-back played 12 times for Ronald Koeman’s team and was a part of Gareth Southgate’s England squad at the European Under-21 Championship.
They love the Targett story at Southampton and who can blame them? The club are proud of their record of developing players and when Reed talks, he can drop plenty of names, from Alan Shearer to Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain; from Calum Chambers and Luke Shaw to the current crop of James Ward‑Prowse, Harrison Reed and Targett.
Reed highlights how each of them has retained a strong connection to the club. “Gareth is a massive inspiration, because he is proof of the pudding,” Reed says. “He was here from eight years of age, he worked his way through and he ended up as the world’s most expensive player at Real Madrid. But he’s never really gone away.
“You get in touch with him and say: ‘Could you do a little voiceover for our academy induction video?’ And it’s no problem at all. The Ox is the same; Theo is the same. Calum still comes down to watch his mates playing for our under-21s.”
Targett, though, ticks a new box; he is the symbol of a breakthrough in talent identification that has delighted everyone at Southampton and the Premier League. Targett was spotted not by a flat-capped scout at the park or the Sunday league playing fields but by a foundation coach, who was working at his school.
Jake Flanagan, a midfielder who has been on the fringes of Southampton’s first team, was in the same year as Targett at Cherbourg primary and that was where he, too, came to the club’s attention. Greg Baker, the head of the Saints Foundation, says 12 boys over the past year have been recommended to the club’s development centres via the schools programme.
The foundation sends its coaches into 41 schools in the region and runs holiday courses and Baker is clear the charity’s work, which uses football as “the hook and the tool” but regularly goes beyond the game’s parameters, owes much to funding received from the Premier League.
The foundation gets a core grant of £75,000 from the league each year – which represents the majority of its grant funding – and it helps it to set up its outreach programmes, which engage with children, people with disabilities and vulnerable adults, such as those with addiction and mental health issues.
Baker talks about how the power of the Southampton badge, not to mention appearances from the club’s senior management and players or access to the facilities at St Mary’s Stadium, can draw in people who may otherwise be uninterested.
The foundation has links to local businesses and charitable agencies, which it can help, to borrow a phrase from Baker, by “sprinkling Saints dust on top”. The breadth of their activities is impressive, ranging from fishing, golf, kick-boxing and street-dance sessions to various innovative workshops.
Baker says the foundation employs 24 full or near full-time staff, plus 45 casual coaches, and it is financially independent, with no money coming directly from Southampton. The club, though, supports it in any number of ways, including accommodating its staff at St Mary’s. The foundation raised £2,700 from the auction of the match-ball from the 8-0 win over Sunderland.
The Premier League’s benevolent side rarely makes for big box-office. With the organisation set to collect more than £8bn from its new TV deal alone, the temptation is to ask what more it can put back. Under the current £5.5bn three-year deal, the Premier League distributes £168m to community programmes and facilities. A tiny amount it can be argued and it has been urged to do much more, such as contributing 5% of its total TV income – rather than just its domestic TV revenue – which would be around £400m.
The clubs see it differently, though. Baker’s previous job, for example, was at Comic Relief and he remembers how the league would donate £1m each year, which was broadly the same as businesses of a similar size. But while the others were applauded, the league was condemned. “We’d see tweets like: ‘The Premier League should have given more, £1m is the weekly wage of four footballers, this is ridiculous,’” Baker says. “But if you take a similar-sized business like, for example, a large supermarket, I can bet that the Premier League puts a lot more back in. The league gives so much to good causes.”
The Southampton chairman, Ralph Krueger, says the league ought not to be embarrassed about the money it makes: “If we are only looking at our personal interests and not giving back in any way, shape or form, then we should be embarrassed and ashamed. But right now, the Premier League has nothing to be ashamed about. I could throw a golf ball from our stadium and hit a multisport facility the foundation built at the St Mary’s school. To see what that has brought to that environment and those kids living in those block houses is really emotional.
“If we can invest in those kind of long-term facilities or take one person who is off a drug rehab project, give them support, take them out fishing and spend time with them … if only one person’s life changes so completely because of the foundation, that is such a beautiful thing. I have been able to see a few of those things.”
The elite player recruitment aspect of the Foundation’s work feels incidental, almost trivial, when set against the tales of hardship and rehabilitation, and yet few things fire the feel-good factor in a football community more surely than a local boy rising to play for his club. Reed has long been adamant the starting XI ought to include six academy-reared players.
The Premier League has poured £340m over four years into its elite player performance plan, which sought to overhaul academies, and Reed is a huge supporter of the headline reforms, chiefly the improvements in coaching and the better links to schools and education. Reed notes the league, through the EPPP, has assumed a lead role in player development – an area that would traditionally have been the preserve of the Football Association.
But he says the plan has not affected Southampton because they already had the same one themselves. “There is a myth about youth development in England and it’s born out of this excuse that only 0.1% make it to the top,” Reed says. “Therefore, if an academy gets one player through, they’ve done a great job.
“I said: ‘No.’ That’s got to be six. There’s no point running an academy at category one level if you think you’re only going to get one through every now and again. We have raised a banner and shown you can produce homegrown talent. You can get them on a journey.”
Guardian
