The English Barcelona

TOTTENHAM TALK

Mauricio Pochettino wants Tottenham to follow in the footsteps of Spanish giants Barcelona and build a team of academy graduates. We'll gloss over the fact that they haven't produced a player who can hold down a first team place in 8 years! Sergio Busquets, now 28, was the last.

The youngest squad in the Premier League dispelled a few myths last season and showed that if youngsters are trusted they can produce the goods regularly. Naturally there will be ups and downs, we are still in the rebuilding and education phase.

While we still can't compete with the wealthy clubs in the transsfer market and with wages, the obvious answer was to grow your own. That entails becoming the best at finding new talent and more importantly developing it.

Playing young players in the Premier League is difficult because results are all important, in uncompetitive leagues you can get away with developing youth and dropping a point or two. To the likes of PSG, Bayern Munich or Juventus it isn't going to make a blind bit of difference. Mind you Juventus simply loan them out to other top flight clubs and develop them that way, they had 55 loan deals last season, plus other co-ownership and full ownership players playing elsewhere.

"It's very important for us to continue, only we need time. There are a lot of examples and the best one, we are all agreed, was Barcelona. They have a lot of good players from the academy, who are among the best players in the world. It is a good example for us. 

"Maybe it is very different, as we have a different philosophy in the way that we work, and we create our own philosophy -- that is very important. But we continue to believe in our young talent. 

"As we bring young talent from the academy, we keep our identity. Tottenham is different to another club and it is for that we need to continue to bring players from the academy.

"Now we have good examples like Cameron [Carter-Vickers], Harry Winks, Marcus Edwards, Josh Onomah, Luke Amos, William Miller, Kazaiah Sterling... Why not believe that one day they are all in the first team and maybe we will get big success with them? 

"This is our dream. Always we need some experienced players that can help the young ones. That is important always. We have great potential in the academy. The club have unbelievable facilities and maybe in two years [will] be in the new stadium. All we have ahead is great and we are all excited for the future here."