Dundee United chief executive Luigi Capuano has admitted it is very difficult to keep top academy talent when English Premier League clubs offer them more money than many first-team stars in the Scottish Premiership earn.
Speaking in a Daily Record ‘In Conversation’, Capuano confirmed that Dundee United firmly supports the Scottish Football Association’s ‘Made in Scotland?’ proposals – aimed at giving rising stars more game time and stopping the talent drain south of the border.
Youngsters earning more than Premiership average
United has one of the best youth set-ups in the country and their top youngsters are in demand. They brought through Scotland youth striker Kai Hutchison but when it came to signing pro-forms he turned down a deal and they had to agree a fee with Everton over the summer.
Capuano confirmed: “Players at 16 and 17 are probably going down to England and getting paid more than the majority of players in the Scottish Premiership. I know the average salary in the Scottish Premiership and some of these young players are earning more than that.
“That’s great for them. If that’s their driver then it is what it is. We lost one player in the summer to Everton and I know the finances that were spoken about then. We tried our utmost to keep that player, everything we could to keep that player, but decisions are made, like I say, whether it’s football or a financial perspective.
“We’ll continue to face that unless there is some change in that area. I’ve had a lot of dialogue with the guys at the Scottish FA and they feel that in order to stop those players going cross-border, it’s about showing them the pathway.”
Battle to keep Lorenzo Sassetti
Dundee United could find themselves in a similar boat with Lorenzo Sassetti. The Italian youth international is the club’s youngest ever player. He is coming up to his 16th birthday and Juventus, Inter and Chelsea are just some of the clubs who are interested. Capuano has insisted United are doing everything they can to convince Sassetti that his future should be at Tannadice.
He insisted: “Lorenzo is a top, top talent. We’re in dialogue with him and his parents. We will try our utmost to keep him and any other talented players that are coming through our academy. From my perspective and from the chairman’s perceptive, he invests a lot in the academy.
“There are lots of good young players coming through and it is on us, as a football club, to show them that pathway is there. We want to keep the players here. We need show there is a pathway here. If we do that, then at least we’ve done everything we know we can.
“From a Dundee United perspective, we need to try to build on that. Lorenzo is a top talent, along with a number of other players. If you look over the Premier Sports Cup group stages, we had Cohen Leiper make his professional debut, along with Jack Anderson. Keir Gilligan made his debut in the final game of last season.”
SFA proposals and the financial gulf
The SFA is pushing ahead with its proposals to bring in game time for more youngsters. They are expected to be voted on before the end of the year. Capuano added: “Going back to the points that SFA are making, Dundee United are absolutely in agreement. We want more under-21 or under-23 playing in the Scottish Premiership.”
United have also lost the likes of Brandon Forbes and Alan Domeracki to Norwich City. The finances might be better down south but he reckons it is even tougher to make your mark on the first-team.
Capuano accepted: “We have in our time at the football club, probably lost three or four players to clubs in England. I’ll be very clear, at no point as a football club did we want to sell those players. For us, we’d want to keep them here and show them the pathway and develop them, but the players, their families or representatives decided that England, whether that be from a football perspective.
“We talk about the pathway up here being difficult, but I think a pathway trying to break in as a 16-year-old, going down to England and the Championship or Premier League club, in my opinion, is far more difficult than in the Scottish Premiership.”
