Like a solution hiding in plain sight, British youngsters are finally starting to embrace moving abroad as a chance to get more playing time and enhance their talents.
The opportunity to experience another culture and a new way of playing football has worked for players coming to these shores for years but is a trend that is only just catching on for players going the other way from Britain.
Squawka has put together a list of some of the young, British and Irish talents that have left these shores to develop their game, as well as how they fared on their adventures:
Oliver Burke
From: Nottingham Forest
To: Red Bull Leipzig
Fee: £15m
Verdict: miss
There hadn’t been as much excitement surrounding a Scottish youngster since Darren Fletcher first broke into the Manchester United first team at the turn of the century than the furore over Oliver Burke when he made his move from Nottingham Forest to RB Leipzig in August 2016.
And as good a career as Fletcher has had in the game, Burke was a different type of player entirely when making his breakthrough. A swashbuckling winger with the pace and skill that gets supporters off their seats, something Scotland haven’t had for many years.
Burke had only been in Germany for a few short months when it looked as though he could be an inspired acquisition for RB Leipzig, scoring once and providing two assists in his opening seven Bundesliga matches. However, Burke’s excellent start soon tailed off as he failed to score another goal for Leipzig.
It seemed like Burke’s career would get the jump-start that it needed when he secured a loan move to Premier League West Brom at the start of the 2017-18 campaign. However, Burke managed just 12 appearances for the Baggies as they were relegated to the Championship.
Robbie Keane
From: Coventry City
To: Inter Milan
Fee: £13m
Verdict: Miss
The most exciting Irish talent of his day. Following an impressive debut season in the Premier League with Coventry City, Robbie Keane was transferred to Inter Milan for a colossal fee of £13m in 2000 shortly after his 20th birthday.
A major factor behind Keane moving to Milan was the club’s manager Marcello Lippi who rated him extremely highly, however, he was sacked just one game into the season.
Lippi’s replacement, Marco Tardelli, evidently didn’t rate Keane as highly as his predecessor and after just 14 appearances and three goals in all competitions, the Irishman was loaned to Leeds in December that year, before joining permanently the following summer.
In fairness to Keane, though, Inter’s strikeforce that season wasn’t half bad. He was competing for a place in the side alongside Christian Vieri, Alvaro Recoba, Ivon Zamorano and Hakan Sukur, while a certain Brazilian named Ronaldo was still around too.
And, although he didn’t have the greatest of times at Inter, Keane did go on to have a very impressive career at Tottenham Hotspur, where he scored over 100 goals and won the 2008 League Cup, and is the Republic of Ireland’s record goalscorer and appearance maker with 68 goals in 146 caps. After prolific spells in MLS and the Indian Super League, Keane finally hung up his boots in November 2018, becoming Mick McCarthy’s assistant manager with the Republic of Ireland.
Ryan Gauld
From: Dundee United
To: Sporting CP
Fee: £3m
Verdict: Jury’s out
Before Burke came along there was another Scottish attacking midfielder attracting plenty of attention in Ryan Gauld, who started his career at Dundee United and who quickly earned the nickname ‘The Scottish Messi’.
Blessed with wonderful dribbling ability and exceptional balance, Gauld established himself as an integral player in the Tangerines first team by the age of 17 and had most of Europe’s biggest clubs keeping tabs on him.
By 2014 he had outgrown his first club and made a £3m move to Sporting CP where he has so far struggled to make too much of an impression. To this day, he has still only made five appearances in the Leões first team, despite appearing 73 times for their B team.
Even when moving out on loan to Vitoria de Setubal and Aves, he has only managed a combined 32 first team appearances at those two clubs across two seasons, while Gauld hasn’t scored or assisted a single goal in eight games on loan at Farense. Now at 22-years-old, the midfielder’s breakthrough needs to come soon.
Ravel Morrison
From: West Ham
To: Lazio
Fee: Free
Verdict: Miss
Once considered a superior prospect to Paul Pogba while the pair were playing alongside each other for Manchester United’s youth team, Ravel Morrison departed Old Trafford for West Ham in 2012 after their coaches finally lost patience with him.
While in East London, Morrison briefly threatened to realise his undoubted potential, emerging as a first-team regular for the Hammers during the 2013-14 season and scoring a memorable solo goal during a 3-0 win against Spurs at White Hart Lane.
Similarly to his time at United, though, things turned sour for Morrison at West Ham and in 2015 he left the club at the end of his contract to join Lazio where he has been restricted to just eight appearances, all in his first season at the club.
Since then, Morrison has had a second loan spell at QPR, after scoring six goals in 17 games there in the 2013-14 season, and spent last season on loan to Mexican side Atlas – where he scored four goals in 25 games.
Dale Jennings
From: Tranmere Rovers
To: Bayern Munich
Fee: £1.8m
Verdict: Miss
In the aforementioned cases, the transferred players were either well-known, highly-rated or both, meaning that relatively little was made of their respective deals.
That certainly wasn’t the case with Dale Jennings, though, as his move from Tranmere Rovers to European giants Bayern Munich in 2011 caught everyone by surprise.
Jennings, then 19, had scored six goals in 29 games for Tranmere in League One during the 2010-11 season but managed just the solitary strike in two seasons for Bayern’s second team, prompting him to return to England to join Barnsley.
The ex-Liverpool academy youngster recently resurfaced at Northwest Counties club FC Runcorn Town, scoring one goal in six appearances so far.
John Bostock
From: Tottenham
To: Royal Antwerp
Fee: Free
Verdict: Miss
Over the past decade or so Crystal Palace have brought through a number of youth products from their academy who have gone on to enjoy successful careers in the game, Nathaniel Clyne, Victor Moses and Wilfried Zaha to name a few. But John Bostock was regarded as the brightest prospect of the lot.
Bostock made his Eagles debut at just 15 and soon after became embroiled in a very public transfer wrangle between his club and Tottenham Hotspur, who were eventually forced to pay £700,000 compensation to Palace.
He ultimately failed to make the grade at Spurs but had looked to have rebuilt his career impressively in Belgium, initially with Royal Antwerp and then OH Leuven, where he scored 20 goals in 58 games, before joining RC Lens in France in the summer of 2016.
Bostock made 32 appearances during his first season in France but, in his second season, fell out of favour and went on to have an eight-game spell in Turkey with Bursaspor.
He recently moved back to France for the 2018-19 season with Ligue 1 side Toulouse, making 11 appearances for the club so far.
Michael Mancienne
From: Chelsea
To: Hamburg
Fee: £1.75m
Verdict: Mixed bag
Tipped to become John Terry’s long-term partner at the heart of Chelsea’s defence while he was progressing through the club’s youth ranks, Michael Mancienne, like countless others, found the path to the first-team instead blocked.
The Feltham-born defender spent three seasons on loan at Wolves before finally leaving the Blues permanently in 2011, joining Hamburg for under £2m following a recommendation from the German clubs Director of Football Frank Arnesen.
Mancienne represented Hamburg for three seasons in the Bundesliga, featuring prominently in his first couple of seasons but returned to English football in 2014 to join Nottingham Forest.
Despite never truly fulfilling his potential, Mancienne went on to make over 100 appearances for Forest before moving to MLS side New England Revolution in August.
Eric Dier
From: Everton
To: Sporting CP
Fee: Loan return
Verdict: Hit
Dier initially moved to Portugal from when he was just seven years old and enrolled at the Sporting academy aged 10 before signing professional terms in 2010. He returned to England with a loan spell at Everton in the summer of 2011 but had difficulties resettling into English life.
Upon his promotion to the Sporting first-team in 2012, Dier caught the eye of Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino and moved to White Hat Lane in 2014 and was used in a variety of positions during his first season with the Lilywhites.
It was the following season in which Dier found his calling as holding midfielder – even earning a call-up to the England senior squad.
Dier has gone on to become one of the most reliable holding midfielders in the Premier League and has 38 caps for England to date – his most recent significant contribution for the Three Lions was scoring the winning penalty against Colombia in the 2018 World Cup round-of-16 game, England’s first ever World Cup shootout win.
Jadon Sancho
From: Manchester City
To: Borussia Dortmund
Fee: £7m
Verdict: Hit
(Photo credit should read OSCAR DEL POZO/AFP/Getty Images)
Sensing that the amount of talent coming through the doors at Manchester City would hinder his first-team chances, Jadon Sancho made the brave choice to move to Borussia Dortmund in August 2017.
Even with four goals and an assist in the Bundesliga, things started a little slow in Germany, with Sancho making just 12 league appearances in his first campaign. This season, however, has been a whole new kettle of fish. Still only 18, Sancho has provided eight assists and scored five goals of his own in just 18 appearances for Dortmund so far, earning his first three England caps in the process.
It would be unfair of us to put too much pressure on Sancho’s teenage soldiers but he already looks like becoming the biggest hit on this list.
The post From Sancho to Keane: Nine youngsters who left British football for abroad at a young age appeared first on Squawka News.
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