Ligue 1 sides clubs see academy as silver bullet amid financial crisis | OneFootball

Amid the financial crisis, some clubs in France’s top-flight see the development of their academies as some form of silver bullet. With TV rights revenue through the floor, player-trading models are seen as volatile and unstable but also necessary by many.

In an exclusive interview with Get French Football News, Sébastien Muet, the director of AS Monaco’s academy, La Diagonale, spoke about the issue. “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,” he began.

He added, “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.”

Monaco, in contrast, along with several other clubs in Ligue 1, have a strong history of player development. “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,” Muet told us.

“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,” he added.

Read our exclusive interview with Muet in full HERE

GFFN | Luke Entwistle