Hoddle's vision offers second chance
By Olly Foster
In Jerez, Spain
BBC SPORTFormer England boss Hoddle watches his academy players
Fernando Torres sold for £50m, Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez bought for close to £60m; what business there was at Anfield on the last day of the transfer window - but spare a thought for Alex Whittle.
He was only six years old when he joined the Liverpool Academy and after 11 years, the club has decided that he is not going to make it at the highest level and let him go.
I met him this week at the Glenn Hoddle Academy (GHA), outside Jerez in southern Spain. He is the newest recruit at the former England manager's bootcamp for the game's 'rejects'.
"It looks really good. A really good complex," Whittle tells me over breakfast, wearing the same clothes he arrived in late the night before.
His luggage went missing but he still has his boots, which he says are the most important thing.
"I like to get on the ball and make things happen. I always wanted to be like Steven Gerrard. The last session at Liverpool was a bit emotional. My mum was a bit upset but it is about what's best for me. I'm a bit nervous but quite excited to see how it goes and see how I play.''
At 17, he is the youngest player at the GHA but looks so much younger. He epitomises the type of player that Hoddle and his network of coaches and scouts is looking for, late developers. But backing their own judgment over that of the clubs is a big gamble and expensive.
With about 25 players staying at the Montecastillo Golf and Sports resort, the GHA's headquarters, it costs over £1m a year to run.
Hoddle divides his time between the academy and media commitments in the UK, the day-to-day running of the operation left to Dave Beasant and Graham Rix. But there has been one major new development since the academy started three years ago.
Academy hopeful Alex Whittle
Jerez Industrial is the city's oldest football club and was going out of business with some serious tax issues until the investors behind the GHA bailed it out to the tune of £160,000, not all the club's debt, but enough for it to survive. For now.
So what do the GHA get in return? Competitive football. They provide the players free of charge so the club can fulfil its fixtures in the fourth tier of Spanish football.
There are 18 regional divisions at this level, involving more than 350 clubs, so if the GHA team get promoted through an incredibly complicated play-off system, there are still another 100 clubs between them and Barcelona.
Match day at the appropriately named Estadio La Juventud (Stadium of Youth) is quite a change of culture, both for the players and the 200-odd supporters, who spread themselves out in the 8,000 seats for last weekend's defeat against Cadiz. Every player was from the UK or Ireland. The nickname Los Ingleses came quickly and easily.
"It's a first isn't it? It's nice and refreshing to see, as all the foreigners are coming to our country blocking off our English lads. We're doing this abroad!'' Hoddle joked, as we watched the match from one of the stands.
"Part of their development is to play competitively. Although there's only a small crowd here it's one step up from training, it's real football,'' Hoddle told me.
Whittle and some of the other academy members looked decidedly unimpressed as they watched from the stands. When their player registrations come through from the Spanish league, they will be in the squad for the next match.
Jerez Industrial president Juan Manuel Delgado has embraced this invasion.
"I think it's a good co-operation between the club and the academy," he said.
"They give us the players and we give them the club. There is a chance for the future stars of the Premier League in England, to play at this club. I hope all the players become stars one day in the Premier League.''
The fans, some of whom paid 10 Euros to watch the 2-0 defeat, are not happy at the moment, but it is hard to gauge whether that is because the GHA has hijacked the club for its own ends or the fact that they have lost four in a row and have slipped off the top of the league.
On balance it is probably the latter but the conflict is obvious. They want the club to do well, Hoddle wants the players to succeed and the club's own ambitions are secondary to that.
"They were going out of existence, so we've helped them. What we've got to do now is see if we can play well and do things,'' he told me in between barking the odd instruction at his players on the pitch or phoning Rix in the dugout with a bit of tactical advice.
"We've got to try and do both, help the club go up. I think if they go up it'll be a technically better league anyway which would help out!''
Scratch beneath the benevolent skin of the GHA there is a business that isn't even close to breaking even. Hoddle is very honest about that, but finances are not the root of his frustration at the moment.
"I get a little bit saddened really, I don't think we get any support from people back in England at all, I think, if anything, they're trying to block us. They are suspicious of what we're doing.
The Stadium of Youth near Jerez
"People are questioning what we are doing. We haven't had that much help from certain institutes.''
The reference to 'institutes' is a broad swipe at the Football Association, the Professional Footballers' Association and certain clubs in the British game.
"It just baffles me that people think we are making millions of pounds. We're making a massive loss at the moment. I've never found anyone embracing what we are doing and trying to help us, but I'm a stubborn guy and we'll keep foraging forward.
"We are all about these lads' futures; their careers. I think there is a group here that can go a long way in football. I can understand that there are people out there who take advantage of young men and think of a pound note first but that's not we're about.
"It's helping the boys out, the ex-professionals who have been turfed out of the game, who we are taking in and developing and trying to get them back into football. There are people questioning it and they shouldn't. It's a part of their development. This is pure."
Hoddle says the investors behind the GHA are 'in it for the long term' but some return would keep them happy, which is why the past few weeks have been frantic. He spent most of transfer deadline day in a small room sitting next to a fax machine with his mobile phone hardly leaving his ear.
We're going to Slovakia next week to see if we can link the academy up with their FA. I wish our FA would think like that
Glenn Hoddle
By the end of the day, three Academy players were back in the English game; Ryan Burge to Championship side Doncaster, Ben Williamson at League One Bournemouth and Dan Spence has joined Blue Square Premier club Mansfield.
Small deals but a very big deal for Hoddle, proof that the system is beginning to work.
His passion for the project is still there but it's still peculiar to see Hoddle in this environment, a man who has played and managed at the very highest level. He says he has lost count of the number of job offers he has received and turned down since he started the academy.
"I'm happy with what I'm doing at the moment but if I get that feeling that I want to get back to that atmosphere on the bench then hopefully there'll be somebody out there who still wants my skills.
"In the future I think I could do an international job. We're going to Slovakia next week to see if we can link the academy up with their FA. I wish our FA would think like that.''
And what about 'our' FA, his former employers who have said they'd prefer an English coach to succeed Fabio Capello.
"In football you never say never,'' Hoddle smiles. "I'll send my CV off but I think it may be returned to sender somehow.''