Chelsea sign an 11-year-old - Is 11 too young to be a footballer?
All athletes start playing the sport they love at a very young age; some start at 6 or 7 and some start a little bit older at 8 or 9. Recently Chelsea Football Club signed an 11-year-old football player named Michael Gyasi to its team. This is the first
time someone so young has been signed to a major club and it is worrying some people. This 11-year-old boy had impressed the Premier League club during his performance last year playing for the Northampton Centre for Excellence. Even though a lot of ethical
questions surround this deal, we will have to wait and see what the little striker can achieve in the next few years.
Gyasi was born in Germany but moved to the UK with his parents four years ago. He showed a lot of skills with a football early on in his life, and he started to play the game at the Northampton Centre for Excellence. He joined the club two years ago and
dazzled a lot of people with his finishing skills. Northampton boss, Trevor Gould, said that the young footballer had really improved his skills and talent under the coaching staff of the Centre and he was a great player for the team. It seems Chelsea noticed
his skills and decided to snap him up. Gyasi impressed scouts when he played against Chelsea’s Under 10 team a year ago, and the club decided to get him before another major club did.
All over the UK at the moment, football clubs are trying to develop youth teams and training academies to find the next big talent that they can use in the future. A lot of commentators and pundits claim that one of the reasons why the German football team
has played so well in the last few years and has produced such a young but strong national team is because Germany has one of the best youth training programmes in Europe. A large portion of talented players come out of the training facilities every year and
a lot of them make the national team and also get picked up to play at the club level. The UK it seems, is trying to emulate this system.
Almost all the football teams in the Premier League at the moment are looking for the next big talented player to replace some of the outgoing ones. Clubs might want to snap up youngsters, train them for a few years and then use them to win matches and increase
their standing in the League. The youth programmes in the country seem to be stepping up to the task and a lot of new talent is being found and trained for a life of football in the future. It seems to be that finding and training local talent is cheaper and
more profitable in the long run for clubs in the League than finding players from abroad.
There are several ethical questions that are raised regarding the hiring of Gyasi by Chelsea. Is it right for a major club to pay money to effectively buy a player that young or should they wait until he is older and then bring him over? Well a lot of people
may think that he is too young to be traded around like an adult footballer, but there is another side to this as well. Chelsea might feel that Gyasi could be the next big thing in the Premier League and they feel that he might get better skill development
coaching and training under their programme. If they leave it too long until they bring him over, he may have picked up poor habits which might be very difficult to unlearn. The other thing is that Northampton were said to have received a sum of £10,000 from
Chelsea for the young footballer. They will be using that to fund further development for their youth programme.
Whether anyone thinks it is right or wrong, Gyasi is all set to become a football star for the Blues in the next few years. He may even decide to become something completely different and not play football when he is older, but Chelsea will be pushing hard
to see him become a future star.
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