There’s a report on the Italian website Tuttomercatoweb that Newcastle United are interested in two top Italian youngsters, midfielder Gianmarco Paulis and striker Simone Solinas.
Gianmarco Paulis – impressing Newcastle scouts
Paulis stands 5’7″ tall and was born in Cagliari, and the 18 year-old is part of his home town club’s Youth Academy. and he has played 26 times over the last couple of seasons for their Youth side.
According to the transfermarkt.com web-site he would cost only about €50K, but of course at such a young age he may not even make it in football, although it’s a small financial risk for Newcastle.
There’s not much we can find out about 17 year-old Simone Solinas, although here is some video of him playing and scoring last season.
[youtube id=”xBwj18dCM-s” mode=”normal” align=”left”]
The news is that the Newcastle scouting team have been watching both youngsters, and they have both been impressive playing for the Cagliari youth side, and it could be that we will see both youngsters join Newcastle in January.
One of the major tenets of Newcastle’s current strategy is to spot top youngsters, and then bring them to Tyneside, although we have not been too successful with that policy, and have nobody in the last six years who has been brought in and is now a regular first team player.
Some of the youngsters brought to Newcastle over the last years were Ben Tozer, Fabio Zamblera, Jóan Símun Edmundsson, Ole Soderberg, Tamas Kadar, Samuel Adjei, Yven Moyo and others who were brought in with some fanfare, but all failed to make it on Tyneside.
We have to hope we have more success in the future with the youngsters we bring to the club.
These two could join Kevin Mbabu and Olivier Kemen, who are two top youngsters Newcastle have already signed this year.
Comments welcome.
You can also reach Ed at admin@nufcblog.com
33 comments so far
Sav
Oct 8, 2013 at 11:41 PM
Comment #1Roy Hodgson will be delighted to hear it…
blew
Oct 8, 2013 at 11:44 PM
Comment #2Failure with previous talent
could have something to do
with the coaching staff.
Graeme
Oct 8, 2013 at 11:54 PM
Comment #3It would certainly seem to be time we had a thorough review of our coaching staff, from the under 12’s all the way through to our 1st team coaches. There just seems to be something completely wrong in how we manage, coach, train the lifeblood of our coach.
The vast majority of the coaching team have been there since SBR and must by now be very stale indeed. A “root & branch” reorganization, with new coaches in most of the younger teams could well do us a major favour. It certainly isnt working the way it is run today, that is very obvious.
Graeme
Oct 8, 2013 at 11:55 PM
Comment #4coach = club, sorry
Blofal
Oct 8, 2013 at 11:56 PM
Comment #5I dont think we nuture talent the right way. The fact these players havent come through is not so much a reflection on their individual talent, its a reflection on NUFCs ability to nuture that talent.
jimmysmith
Oct 9, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Comment #6We have a talented, yet still incomplete squad. Guys like Santon, Mbiwa, Sissoko and Anita are still developing at this level, others have shown patchy form, and the squad has more than its share of injury issues. We also still lack obvious depth in a couple of key positions and so are far from the finished article. Pards might not be the best, but he hasn’t been dealt the best hand either in the time he’s been here. I find much of the criticism of him too harsh.
Kc-Toon
Oct 9, 2013 at 12:23 AM
Comment #7Failure of previous talent is not a result of how coaches fail them IMO. The players fail due to a variety of things such as lack of commitment, Lackluster diet, Being payed to much at such a young age or sometimes just not having the natural ability. Firstly, Top players are not shaped completely by their coaches, They are the result of their own hard work. Look at all the top players in the world, And there is no pattern of academy, region or country in which they are graduating from. Some may say teams like Southampton are producing great players due to the coaching system, but the fact is players were plucked out from academy’s at a young age all around the county by a group of scouts , who the majority are now employed by fulham may i add. Yes i agree coaches helped shape the players future, But paying 20,000 for a young 14 year old with bounds of potential, who would go on to apply the right attitude and willingness to learn eventually resulted in the making of him. Secondly, If you look through various academy’s across Britain, you wont find much variation to the way the players are being coached. Even your local football club are being forced to coach players in a certain way recently, Depending on if they are FA charted, To try and produce technically better players. One particular coach at Newcastle includes a fella called alf galustian, a highly regarded technical coach, who has overlooked Bayern, Madrid, Milan and arsenal. Although he is not actively involved day to day, He implements the way we coach kids and the first team, along with arsenals youth system. Sorry for such the rant, but ive heard so much bashing of the coaches at Newcastle, which I have always felt it was undeserved!
Blofal
Oct 9, 2013 at 2:04 AM
Comment #8Kc-toon so what your saying is our coaching and nurturing of talent is fine it’s just our scouts are crap and the players we recruit lack desire, get paid too much have a lacklustre diet…
I for one don’t think our scouts are crap given the gems we have found currently in the first team. I’m afraid I have to disagree with you.
LEROI
Oct 9, 2013 at 2:40 AM
Comment #9My nephew is goalkeeper for the under 11s now moved from u10s 3wks ago i’ll let his coaches know that they are subject to a review by us scarey bloggers i bet they crap their trackies when i tell them that hahaha!
Kc-Toon
Oct 9, 2013 at 3:10 AM
Comment #10I was not saying our scouts were crap, Carr has undoubtedly recruited some great players, I was using the setup at Southampton to highlight how coaches perhaps didnt create a world class player, But paid an astronomical fee for a 14 year old kid, who clearly had huge potential, and watched him rise. As for the players lacking desire ect, Yes, players fail because they lack these qualities, Not to say the players do not work hard in these areas, But top players can distinguished for giving that extra effort to become successful.
jimmysmith
Oct 9, 2013 at 5:13 AM
Comment #11Being over 40 and having suffered the misfortune of having endured an arts degree, albeit at provincial polytechnic masquerading as a university I have a tendency to read The Guardian and listen to its football podcast as well as reading the sports pages of national broadsheets such as The Telegraph and The Times and can assure anyone that could care less that their knowledge and interest in Newcastle is PATHETIC!!!!!
jesperfuglsang - captain of the lemon crew
Oct 9, 2013 at 5:45 AM
Comment #12Morning lads!
Funny discussion that of our acadamy and our obvious lack of talent comming through!
If coaches are not partly tp blame then surely guys like Kc most blame the scouts cause Ajax bring talent through every year. Lately they have been baying a lot of Danish talent and we don’t really have that much talent 😉
But their coaching setup gets the best out of them. Eriksen have come through, Boilesen is coming. through, Fischer is following and soon you will see a kid calles Lucas Andersen.
So are their scouts just scouting the right players with the right mentality or do they have a setup that fits these youngster and get the best out of them?
Either way we are producing talent at Newcastle so maybe both need changing?
catchy in norway
Oct 9, 2013 at 6:28 AM
Comment #13I thinks it’s Pardews lack of ability to run a club that is to blame , he has does not seem to have any control over anything, I think some senior players like him because he is very lax in his approach it’s easy money for them , I think he would rather be seen as one of the lads,
if players like Anita and marv can not get games and these guys have played for there national teams how the hell are our kids ment to break through ?
Sunderland get poyet
John Tudor
Oct 9, 2013 at 6:31 AM
Comment #14the only danish talent being served up at st james is the bacon butties
Santon03
Oct 9, 2013 at 7:28 AM
Comment #15I watched some local documentary in Indonesia few years ago about football talents of Ajax since there is long and special relationship between Indonesia and Holland, they come to Indonesia every now and then. There are many Dutch players with Indonesian heritage playing/played for Holland like Van Bronckhorst, Reiziger, Nigel De Jong, Landzaat, Makaay, Mols, Heitinga, etc.
At first, they will try to find their strength by playing at 3 different positions even when they were signed for example as a striker, so they don’t necessary end up as a striker.
I don’t think they do that in NUFC, when they signed a CB, they will train them as CB only even if their natural talent is best suited as a striker and they will end up as failure or mediocre players. I don’t think they tried to spot their strength and natural abilities, but then again I don’t know because I never watch NUFC academy training.
Lilongwe Geordie
Oct 9, 2013 at 7:42 AM
Comment #16Alf Galustian does not work as a coach for NUFC. He is the founder of a coaching and development organisation that offer technical advice globally. He works for us and Stoke as a coach educator, however, any influence on coaching is mainly focused on the 12-18 year olds at the club. Given that he has only been directly involved with us for a short period he won’t have had a huge influence on any of our first team pool.
I have often said the problem comes at this club once they leave the younger age groupss and move onto Donachie, Watson, Carver, Stone and Beardsley. Even today we have a number of youth internationals playing, we always have. But something happens between them playing at Under 17/18 level for England/Country of Origin and making the first team.
This could simply be physical maturation happens at an earlier age up north. But I find that unlikely to be something which blights every good prospect we have had for 10 years or so.
It could be they get money to quickly, but that only comes with a few first team games, until then they don’t get that much coming through the academy. I’d say that could account for Ranger, maybe Carroll – both at a push.
Lifestyle, that is a big possibility. All the rumours on Andy Carroll’s life would point towards him having lifestyle problems for a professional athlete. But certainly not all.
The common theme is coaching in those crucial years between 17 and 21. Interestingly this is something that Galustian picked up on and mentioned in an interview maybe 1 or 2 years ago when he was involved with the FA in the Elite Player Performance Program – that many clubs in England view technical coaching as complete and no further development required once a player reaches 17/18. In Germany, Spain, France and many others he says that it is still the main focus at that age.
Anyway, we all know the limitations of our coaching staff at senior level, we discussed it all at length over the summer when we were expecting a new technical coach to be appointed.
Lilongwe Geordie
Oct 9, 2013 at 7:49 AM
Comment #17Jesper,
You have hit on something on the scouting, at a young age emphasis is paid to the mentality. I know that a couple of clubs used to use psychometric testing with youngsters that they were interested in signing for academy level. How many do now I couldn’t say.
Our other issue is that our national scouting framework isn’t particularly well set up. The club seemed to want to press on with this issue, albeit by bringing in Mick Harford, over the summer.
I’m sure many of us played football to a decent level, and occasionally you would hear a scout was coming to watch the game – I know a number of players who went on to YTS terms through this fashion. Does this still happen at Newcastle?? Anyone with kids playing shed any light on that?
Lilongwe Geordie
Oct 9, 2013 at 7:53 AM
Comment #18Catchy,
Youth development has been a problem at NUFC since Keegan scrapped the reserves and stopped paying any attention to that area. Pardew is merely continuing our poor run in this area.
It is also a symptom of the success instantly culture that has developed at the top level in the Prem.
Rotonda heights
Oct 9, 2013 at 7:59 AM
Comment #19Lilo
I have been on several courses with Alf and Coever coaching. I think you’ll find Coerver coaching has been at NUFC before in KK’s time and it was used for the first team squad then.
Gerard Houllier has some superb coaching drills as well, as does Simon Clifford with Futebol de Salao.
Pardew should be much more innovative and take a holistic approach with attention to diet and fitness as well as alternative coaching methods. Aerobics, aqua aerobics, yoga, swimming, 30 km cycle rides etc are common place now with modern progressive coaches.
Lilongwe Geordie
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:07 AM
Comment #20Rotonda,
Maybe in the past, but currently he is working with the younger age groups – it is a direct result of being involved with the EPPP. He has worked with almost every Premier League club in some capacity since 1984 and the setup of his group though.
There are plenty of coaches out there who could offer a lot to the club in terms of drills and methods. Sadly, I don’t see Pardew as progressive enough to adapt to these methods. As for Stone and Carver, less said the better really.
wolfshead@toon
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:14 AM
Comment #21jimsmith
interesting that you have a degree i thought that would have given you a more balanced view of nufc
geordieboy83
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:18 AM
Comment #22Unfortunately youth development has been a huge problem throughout the 30 years I’ve supported us. Youngsters who’ve made the grade are few n far between. Aaron Hughes, lee Clark, Andy Carroll it ain’t many.
Please don’t shoot me down for this but again I believe we as dans play a small part. We ask for youngsters to be given a chance I.e last year fergie, Sammy, vukcic, etc. but then results don’t go our way so the youngsters aren’t good enough sack the manager and so on. Which results in managers panicking fearing for there jobs and playing the Jonas’s as a safe bet.
Other teams do it better than us no doubt but we need more patience not write fergie off for being to small, Campbell for being to ginger, Sammy for his surname. Everton are great at doing it, not much money so bring in Coleman, hibbert, anichebe and standing by them.
croftus5678
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:20 AM
Comment #23i think we are being very very unfair with them tbh !
a team can expect maybe 1 player to come of age through the ranks per season ? the rest are bought !
we have dummett/krull/saylor/bigi/sammy that have come through and definatly ready for first team play !
Then we have ferg/vukic/cambell/good/newton/streete/alnwick who some say are ready and others say not !
and we forget the age of mbiwa/hairdryer/santon/marvgosling who according to age should be borderline dev players and still very young.
how many do we need to say we have been a success in the youth setup ?
Partizan
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:21 AM
Comment #24I was always wondering how often do the reserves play,,is there a special league just for the reserves in England…for example In Spain you have the the best of the reserves and the youth academy playing for Barcelona B or Real Madrid Castilla..same thing in Germany you have Bayern and many other teams playing their reserves and youngsters constantly every week competing against strong team and that’s why they develop so quickly.
jimmysmith
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:27 AM
Comment #25Yeah, well, as I said, it’s not much of a degree.
Lilongwe Geordie
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:30 AM
Comment #26Croftus,
I’m not sure I agree that Dummet or Sammi are ready. Dummett is now being labelled as the best thing since sliced bread after just 45minutes of Prem football. As I have said in the past, Huntington and Edgar looked good for a few games, but neither cut it at this level in the end.
Sammi struggled at Boro, Fergie is now struggling at Brum, benched more often than starting at the minute.
Krul, well keepers have been a strong point and still are for our coaching staff. But they have different coaches from the outfield players so are a separate issue.
Saylor, years ago he came through. Bigi, hardly counts at the minute. Last year was based on ability already possessed, we will see if he gets better or regresses now.
Campbell, Streete, are still at the tail end of the academy structure. Time will tell how they get on, but Campbell is already getting less international recognition then at earlier age groups…
Marv is 27, as for the others, it shows how poor our development is when they are compared with young players that are bought.
clinath@ed
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:40 AM
Comment #27Morning lads….on the youth theme, caught the TOON vs WBA reserve match last week here in the midlands. Got some good youngsters, playing nice, on the ground football…I still think yong Cambell is too small but I like the look of Armstrong, could be very good.
The disappointing player for me (again) was Vuckic, scored 2 goals, took the the headlines but……his work rate is pathetic. Beardsley had to constantly gee him up to get any kind of response. I think the kid will fail to make it unless he addresses this part of his game.
Santon03
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:54 AM
Comment #28Why is it always comments like they are not ready or matured or experienced yet?
When you are good enough and old enough then you are ready for few games with 1st team.
1st few games maybe doing well amybe not, it’s normal, you can’t just judge them on their first few games even the seniors can have bad games.
They just need chances and train with 1st team, by chances I mean at least 45mins not just 5 or 10minutes. When we say they are not ready then we keep bringing foreign players in when will they have their chances or will they ever be ready?
This is just ridiculous, other teams in the world gave their youngsters chances or at least loan them at teams in good leagues, we have youngsters playing at 2 division, the competition is far different than premier league and we judged them in epl games. What a joke!
Santon03
Oct 9, 2013 at 9:00 AM
Comment #29you gave foreign players time to settle into the team but not the youngsters and you expect them to do well, yea rite!!
Santon03
Oct 9, 2013 at 9:15 AM
Comment #30Lilo
Huntington and Edgar got their chances while Roeder was in charge, after big sam took over they didn’t have any chance because big sam signed babayaro, geremi, jose, cacapa, faye, rozehnal, beye.
Charlie in the Gallowgate
Oct 9, 2013 at 9:28 AM
Comment #31Does anyone like me think that the football season is a total cock-up.
Just start to get into it then we have a break
When the TOON have played Liverpool they will have played 8 league games and 2 league cup games in 72 days. (I know we have had Internationals.
Come winter its cold players more susceptible to injuries, from the 30th of November to the 1st of January the TOON play 8 games in 34 days
Crazy!!!!!!!
Partizan
Oct 9, 2013 at 9:46 AM
Comment #32Santon i agree what you say but keep in mind that that even other teams have some spectacular youngsters who can’t get anywhere near the first team,,and its understandable,EPL is a strong league for such a huge risk,look at Kyle Walker.A player with such abilities he still had to go on a 2 year loan where in our team would probably be a starter without going on loan.If you wanna create a team for the future then we should buy young players who from the moment you buy them they are ready for the first team,or at least close to the first team….but those players would cost around 3-6 mill and not 200k or some funny figure.
Example:
Jano Ananidze-20 years old
Luciano Vietto-19
Fyodor Smolov-23
Bruno Mendes-19
All these 4 i mentioned would break into the first team within a year and would not cost more than 5 mill….have a look at Verona this season,came from Seria B and took Iturbe on loan,,one of the smartest loan moves of the year…The problem of our scouting team and especially Graham Carr is that he’s focused mainly on French players which are very good in Physicality but lack Technique or they have it but they’re too slow to execute it.They say we want Arsenal’s blueprint,but best blueprint in whole Europe is Porto,no team can match their transfers…yes they pay 5-6 mill for a 19 year old but at least they know what the’re getting and they hardly go wrong…5 years ago i was mentioning Falcao for NUFC,80% didnt even know who the guy is,and the other 20% said he’s nothing special,,,3 years ago everyone all of a sudden”oh my god Falcao Falcao”..
Search Brazil,Argentina,Uruguay,,,explore South America…you’ll be amazed what you gonna find there.
Mint
Oct 9, 2013 at 10:16 AM
Comment #33FFS, how hard is it for these young talented players to simply play at PL standard? – its just football, you play everyday and get better! and they’re being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a year too as if playing a sport for a career wasn’t motivation enough!
I just – don’t – get it.