A few hours before PSV Eindhoven open their Uefa Champions League campaign at home to Manchester United on Tuesday, the Under 19 sides of both clubs will meet, United's managed by Nicky Butt.
Part of the Champions League’s strategy to replicate the experience of the first team, the game will be on the artificial surface used by PSV’s second team at the Dutch club’s futuristic De Herdgang complex, surrounded by trees on the outskirts of the city of 200,000, the fifth-biggest in Netherlands.
Dutch champions PSV have enjoyed considerable success in recent years after shifting their philosophy to focus on youth. Art Langeler, 45, has been one of the key components. The academy director oversees PSV’s teams below the first team and works closely with the first-team coach Phillip Cocu with the intention of supplying ready-to-play, home-grown footballers.
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Langeler, a former footballer and coach, invited a visitor to his office overlooking the second-team pitch to explain why.
“PSV changed their vision in 2013 here because they were not able to buy players aged 25 or plus anymore who are successful in the Dutch league,” he said. “If you’re really good here and you’re 25-plus, then you are going to play in Germany, England or Spain. You’re not going to play in Holland because you can’t make the same money here.”
The shift in strategy was nothing new for the Dutch.
“The examples for us were Feyenoord and Ajax, who were forced to promote youth because of a lack of money,” he said. “Ajax had always done this; they’ve won the European Cup doing this. Feyenoord started five years ago.”
It was new to PSV, who historically spent big by Dutch standards.
“We decided to invest in our academy, but we needed all the parts to fit into place. We needed consistency,” Langeler said. “If you have a first-team coach who doesn’t look at the academy, then it’s not going to work at all.
“If you have people changing positions every year, it’s not going to work. The people here before me were in the role for a year before becoming head coach somewhere else. We agreed to do this for four years.”
Cocu, director of football Marcel Brands, general manager Toon Gerbrands and Langeler are behind the system. It works. PSV’s second team, Jong PSV, are in the Dutch second division.
Only Ajax have a second team at that level, yet the attitude towards winning is not conventional.
“I don’t care if the second team or Under 19s become champions,” Langeler said. “I’m interested in which players will be ready to play for the first team at 18.”
They need to win games to stay in the league, which they do. But their first game was a culture shock.
“We had players aged 17 or 18 and they thought they were champion players because they’d won the league with Jong PSV, been promoted and were in the second division,” Langeler said.
“We played a game against De Graafschap, my former club. We lost 5-0 against experienced professionals and received two red cards. Some of the PSV players were crying afterwards. They learned a lot from that defeat and Phillip (Cocu) says to me that the gap between the young players and the first team is now much less.
“We now have 15 players from the second and Under 19 teams who are ready to train and play with the first team. We have a selection problem and it can be difficult to keep them all happy.”
So how do they manage that?
“By rewarding them,” Langeler said. “We might say, ‘You’re not playing this week, but you’ll play next week.’ Or, ‘You’re not playing but you’re going to do dedicated individual training with Marc van Bommel or Ruud van Nistelrooy.”
The two PSV legends, who played for the biggest clubs in the world and are working towards their coaching badges, help train the youngsters. PSV’s youth teams are also sent abroad to play in tournaments and measure themselves against the best, but Langeler says the players should also develop in their lives away from football.
“We did a project in Zwolle 10 years ago where the players went to school and trained together two or three times per day. It didn’t work,” he said. “The 20 boys got tired of seeing the same faces every day. Here, we have them two days a week. They have to develop normally, be around girls, be normal kids rather than in a drilling programme.”
Cocu came back to PSV six years ago, initially as an assistant to the Under 19s. Five of his players made the first team; three are still in it.
“PSV became champions last season with the youngest PSV team ever and the highest number of academy players,” Langeler said of a system that has been watched with envy.
“We have to work to our strengths. It’s not so difficult for PSV to get the best young players in Holland because we’re one of the biggest three clubs.
“Our problem is how to get the players ready to play for the first team at 18. In England, the average Premier League debut is 23. In Holland, it’s 18. We have to get a child at 14 and make him ready to play by 18 – and not just as a footballer. They have to be ready mentally to deal with 35,000 people at the stadiums, and we look at the mental development of teenage boys with specialists. We analyse players. There’s not one way of coaching for all because people are different.
“The process of a player developing is more important than the results of the games they play in. We play players out of their best positions and force them to use their weaker feet, for instance. And they will make mistakes and learn from them and be better for when they get to the first team and winning matters.
“In Holland, we get a lot of criticism because others think we’re only about winning. That’s not true. But the way of thinking in Holland is that if you play well, the game isn’t about winning. We get Dutch players who’ve played abroad and they come back and say, ‘It’s all about winning.’ They say we have to change. I don’t agree with that.
“Holland is a small country and we’re good at football. Why? Because we’re creative, we think about the game and we play attacking football. We don’t always win and so be it. We’ve reached two World Cup finals – a small country like us should be 20th, not second.”
Not every PSV youngster can make it.
“If they’re here at 16, then they’re good enough to be a pro and most will be top-level players in Holland. Not everyone stays in football, but we keep in touch with every player who has been through here,” Langeler said.
“We’ll call them three times in the year after they’ve left, two the year after that. We don’t close the door and say goodbye. We want to know how we could have improved their time in the PSV academy. The feedback we get from former players is very good.”
PSV do not limit their scouting to the Netherlands. They search nearby Belgium until the age 16 and sometimes after 16, especially in Denmark and even Iceland. They are also looking more to Spain and Portugal, depressed economies which produce great players. The club that brought Ronaldo and Romario from Brazil to Europe have scouts in South America, but that source has become complicated.
“The players are sold when they are 12,” Langeler said. “You never know who you are dealing with because they have numerous people claiming to represent them.
“The other issue is money. We can’t compete with Chelsea or Man City for young players. If we buy a player here for a million euros, then it has to be ‘bingo’. I don’t like the strategy that Chelsea or City have where they buy lots of players and hope that one of them makes it.
“We see some good Dutch players going to England too early. They go for money and it’s not always best for their development. They may claim that a club like Norwich is bigger. Richer, maybe, but there’s no way they are bigger than Feyenoord or PSV or Ajax.”
He posed a question: where is the best place for a young player? At De Kuip, Feyenoord’s home, where crowds regularly top 50,000, or in the reserves at Norwich City?
“It’s a continuous battle,” he said. “The English scouts come here to take our best players at 15. If they want the money, they go. If they want development, they stay. Fortunately for us, a lot of Dutch players who went there failed. We use the failures as examples not to go.”
PSV central defender Jeffrey Bruma went to Chelsea, played four games, went on loan to Leicester City and played 11 games before returning to the Netherlands.
“It’s better to do it the Memphis way,” Langeler said. “Be great in Holland, then make the transfer.”
Memphis Depay was already in the first team when Langeler arrived.
“He’d been here since he was nine and I’m told he was a difficult character to work with because of his private life,” Langeler said. “In those times, there was not much attention to that, it was all about developing him because he was a big talent. But he used the anger and frustration from his private life to be a success in football. He trained so hard for the goal of being a top player.
“He’s not a big communicator, he’s not the most talkative guy, but he’s exceptionally talented in football. I’m convinced that he’ll do great in England; I don’t have any doubt about it.
“He’s only 21, but he’s already played 100 games in the Dutch first division and played 20 times for Holland. He’s already experienced.”
Depay stayed an extra year in Eindhoven because he wanted to win the title. He did that, then joined United.
On Tuesday night, his return to Eindhoven gives him the chance to show those former fans what they are missing.
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