Youth Policy

"From the actual academy I think it's probably nearer 13, or 14 players have come through," Ardley told us. "There’s probably about five or six that have been sold on. At the moment the figure that they have brought into the club stands somewhere in the region of £14m in transfer fees, so if you’re looking over the last five years, it’s a nice sort of profit."

But Ardley wants far more than just making a profit. He recognises that players develop at different rates and that a slow starter can turn into a good player, so patience is vital. "You can't pigeon-hole," he says. "You can't say, 'well if you are not a stand-out player at this age, they are not going to be.' I think people develop at different ages and that's what you've got to take into consideration."

The Right Way
Cardiff City has a very strong youth policy. "It would be fair to say the lads at Cardiff have probably got their opportunities earlier because of the club that they’re at," England's Under-19 manager Noel Blake told us exclusively last year. "That comes into it. Sometimes where you are based – the club you are at – [opportunities] may come earlier than the other clubs, so Cardiff are a youth development club. They're producing players, but it's not the fact that the academy is producing players. Some make the mistake of putting the tag of academy onto it. They are a football club with a youth department and they were producing players prior to becoming an academy."

Cardiff allows talented young footballers to play, rather than warming a bench after the academy develops them. The Bluebirds' mix of social responsibilities, a vibrant youth policy and an excellent academy has won the club and its philosophy admirers beyond Britain's shores. "It's not only football in their lives," says FC Midtjylland's Executive Vice President Søren Bach about the boys in Midtjylland's academy. "It's so important for us that they have something after training to do. The Cardiff way, I think, is the right way to do it."