Exclusive | AS Monaco’s Academy Director on internationalisation, patience, Premier League-tailored products, and calm amid French football’s financial storm | OneFootball

There is no hiding that times are hard in Ligue 1. Purse strings have been tightened amid the financial crisis, brought on by plummeting TV rights revenues. Only a few clubs are immune. Most are reliant on a player-trading model to stay afloat. Whilst Toulouse FC sustain this model through their data-driven recruitment, the majority of clubs do so through player development, leaning more on the strength of their academies.

That is particularly the case at AS Monaco, who had a bumper summer. Maghnes Akliouche’s €50m move to Paris Saint-Germain made him the second most expensive academy product in the Principality club’s history, below only Kylian Mbappé. The France international’s departure was anticipated, but it was a surprise when Newcastle United dropped €40m on Aladji Bamba. The midfielder made just 25 first-team appearances before becoming the fourth-most expensive academy product to depart in Monaco’s history. New pépites are coming through, with Anis Soubeir, Safouane Benzahra, and Pape Cabral among those to have featured under Filipe Luís this season.

As Sébastien Muet, the Director of Monaco’s Academy, tells Get French Football News in an exclusive interview, developing players has always been part of the club’s DNA. But the academy is evolving, too. GFFN understands that there is a drive to internationalise La Diagonale, as evidenced by the recent recruitment of German Dennis Schmitt as manager of the Groupe Élite, whilst the club also has the objective of 30% of the first team being comprised of academy products. Muet sat down with us to discuss the state of affairs at La Diagonale.

We’re speaking during the international break, and the fact that so few players have stuck around La Diagonale, due to call-ups to their respective national set-ups, perhaps, says something about the strength of the academy…

The academy is in good health! It is consistent with what came before because Monaco has always been a club that provided for different national teams, notably the French national sides. We have players wearing the shirts of Belgium, the Netherlands, Morocco, Lithuania… and of course L’Équipe de France. We have this multi-nationality. Around 23% of our academy players have gone away with their national teams.

We want to work with the French players who have the highest potential, but fundamentally, Monaco wants to have an international dimension. We have an international dimension. We have an attacker who plays for the Denmark U17s (Ekene Chukwuani) who has been with us for the past two seasons. It means that there is an opening of our borders, beyond Monaco but also beyond France, too. It is quite interesting. Today, it is true that, as well as the French language, we are hearing more and more the English language within the walls of La Diagonale.

As well as developing players from a young age, Monaco have recently made investments in bringing in players that are slightly older and fall within that ‘post-formation’ category. Do those older players require a different form of management?

The work remains the same. It is true that a player nowadays can break out at 13 or 14, but sometimes the kids need a bit more time and emerge at 17 or 18. Monaco are attentive to all age groups from 12 to 20 years old. When they arrive at 18 or 19, the time [to work with them] is a bit shorter, but the logic doesn’t change. You have to factor in the journey, where they are coming from, like with Anis Soubeir or Safouane Benzahra, who arrived a bit in the middle of their journey. You have to take into account where they are coming from, their workload, their story, their culture, and then, very quickly, you have to get them performing to the level of the first team, so that shortens the time that you are working [with them], but in any case, our objectives and working principles absolutely do not change.

You mention Soubeir and Benzahra, both of whom have played for Monaco’s first team this season. Can you tell us a bit more about their journeys in particular?

I said not too long ago to be careful about these young players who appear in the first team like that during pre-season. There is really a distinction to be made between a player who is ready to emerge at the professional level and one like Anis or Safouane, who, due to opportunities, have managed to integrate through the strategy of pushing players from the academy to the level of the first team. which Filipe Luís and his staff do formidably, and which is advocated by our institution, because, today, it is what our president (Dmitry Rybolovlev) wants, what Thiago Scuro and Carlos Avina, who pilot the more global project want, to ensure that opportunities for young players are concrete.

Nowadays, there are opportunities in pre-season. It is clear that a certain number of young players from the academy have seized this opportunity and have managed to acquire experience, perhaps quicker than expected, with the first team. But I highlight that you have to be careful and that the road to becoming a professional player at AS Monaco is long, it is hard, and I would say that, when Safouane and Anis have made 30/35 games in Ligue 1 as starters, we can then talk about professional players. I maintain that these are young players from the academy who are in the process of optimising their development and gaining minutes with our first team.

Despite Monaco being renowned for its youth development, would you say that the club are actually relatively patient when it comes to promoting youth into the first-team set-up. I think about Akliouche, who didn’t truly break through until his 20s, or Bamba, who only did so at 19. When you compare that to some players, such as Max Dowman or JJ Gabriel, who are being given opportunities at the age of 15, it is clear that Monaco have a different policy…

I think that AS Monaco is a club that respects the different stages, because our objective is not to push a player to the highest level. Our objective is to establish a player at the highest level; those are two different things. Today, in our strategy, you can have opportunities to put a player in the first team, but it is another job to establish them in the first team. There are a certain number of factors that need to be respected: athletic, playing culture, game principles, without forgetting, and it is the most important, the factor of emotional management in elite-level football. For that, you need time. We have always been careful. Thiago and Carlos are really aligned with that.

These are talented young players. Our objective isn’t to put them in the first team and then no longer see them. Our objective is to put them in the first team so that it is a step in their development, and for that, you build them so that there is game time for them. Our Groupe Élite project is a great step. What is happening with Cercle Brugge (a partner club also owned by Rybolovlev, where the likes of Edan Diop and Paris Brunner have recently gone on loan) is another great step to complement the work done in the academy, to give game time to players and to help them mature.

Does showing the pathway to the first team constitute a bigger part of the job now, given that English clubs in particular are looking to recruit younger and younger? Melvin Gomes, who just signed his first professional deal, for example, was reportedly the subject of interest from Chelsea…

It comes from a general principle. You’re talking about Melvin Gomes. We spoke recently with his agent. I think that the most important thing is to give meaning to a player’s journey. Giving meaning is knowing why you get up in the morning and knowing what the steps are in your career. When the player, with his agents and his family, adheres to this itinerary, it is very easy. Our job is effectively to show them that we have put the address into the GPS for them. Today, off you go; the path is straight on.

There are steps; you have to respect them; we don’t sell dreams. We have a bit of experience behind us. I have been doing this job for 30 years, so you can try to know how things are going to go. You don’t have a crystal ball or magic cards; all you have is the feeling, the know-how, the security, and the kindness that you need to get there. When that is the case, and it is sincere, players believe in it. You are speaking about four players from the 2008 generation who have signed their professional deals. That’s really a reference point for our 2009/10-born players.

The academy has always been the cornerstone of AS Monaco, but would you agree that, in the current financial context of French football, it has never been as important?

I wouldn’t say so. There isn’t a difference and that is what makes the club strong. The economic crisis in French football, the TV rights- we won’t speak about all of that- things like that are leading some clubs today to urgently, and I mean urgently, tell themselves that player development could be an interesting economic lever. That isn’t the case at Monaco. The academy has existed for 50 years here. It is 50 years that the academy has been at the centre of the project. So it isn’t the economic crisis that French football is experiencing that is telling AS Monaco, our executives, “Let’s make the academy important.” No, it’s the club’s culture. That’s how the club is.

Today, there is nothing artificial. Everything is prepared, structured, coherent, and continuing on its path. I hear a lot of things about having to sell academy players, but it isn’t just today that you have to do that; it is the past 40 years that you’ve had to sell them. At Monaco, it is a part of the club’s economic blueprint and not just since the financial crisis impacted French football. When I arrived in April 2022, in my first interview, I said that player development was in AS Monaco’s DNA. It’s true; it’s not a slogan. Everything is built so that the club’s DNA is its academy. That is so important.

When you’re panicking, you are never good. When you’re panicking, you make a lot more mistakes than when you’re in control, and I think that the art of a professional club today is the art of anticipation. It is the art of structuring things so that the structure and the institution aren’t dependent on people but on the institution itself. That is a big quality at AS Monaco.

I interviewed Paul Mitchell when he was the sporting director here at Monaco and he told me how the academy was tailoring their players to be attractive to the Premier League. Does that remain the case?

Yes, because in English football, there are indeed our principles of play: to go forward quickly, to press across the pitch and to press high, verticality in transition… all of these things obligatorily lead us to refer to English football. In terms of athletic profiles, too. Today, there is this interesting dimension of speed, size, impact, that can sometimes interest English clubs, but not just them. But the Premier League is the Premier League. When you seduce English football, it means that you seduce the whole world.

GFFN | Luke Entwistle – reporting from Monaco