Parish and Vieira reveal Palace's Academy strategy

Patrick Vieira will never forget his first one-on-one conversation with Wilfried Zaha on becoming head coach at Crystal Palace. Zaha embodies that “south London and proud” ethos running through the club, that confidence and ambition.

Vieira loves that home-grown energy, which is why he is so supportive of Palace’s impressive talent factory of an Academy featured in a six-part documentary series starting on Thursday.

“When you look at south London, and you look at Wilfried’s character, it’s about being a winner,” Vieira explains. “It’s about competing. You’re going on the field, and you’re not scared of anybody. One of the greatest conversations I had with Wilfried was about when he’s on the field. He talked about that he doesn’t care about what shirt you [the opponent] are wearing, what badges you have, he just wants to compete against you. Wilfried’s mentality is what Crystal Palace and south London is all about.

“Players like Wilfried are really important for the fans. The fans love to identify with players coming through the Academy because they always feel those players understand them and they play with passion. Wilfried’s values are also really important for the manager to keep and to spread out in the dressing room.”

Zaha was born in Ivory Coast but moved with his family to Thornton Heath aged four. South London has a population of 2.8 million and, according to Palace’s Forest Hill-born Chairman Steve Parish, is in the “top two or three hotbeds for football in the world.”

Local lads such as Jadon Sancho, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Joe Gomez are among those who have been selected for England by Gareth Southgate, who opened Palace’s new Academy across the road from Vieira’s first-team training centre last October.

Zaha now represents Ivory Coast, having played twice for England, and reflects the diversity of south London. “Fourteen percent of all the England Premier League players come from about a five-mile radius,” Parish says, talking at the Academy.

“It’s the cultural mix here, the diversity. Lunar House in Croydon is where you come to claim asylum so naturally people settle around here. All the people that come into the area come from countries that have a big background in football.” Like Ivory Coast.

“And cage football is also a big part of it,” Parish adds of the intense, skills-filled small-sided splashes of Astroturf and steel dotted all over. Sancho honed his tricks in cage football in Kennington. Palace now actively scout south London cages. “I came here for an Under-15 game at the weekend,” Parish says, “and we had a young kid score two goals we took out of cage football at 14.”

Palace’s Academy is adorned with pictures of those who came through the ranks, including Kenny Sansom, Ian Wright and Southgate himself. Three Academy products, Zaha, Nathaniel Clyne and Tyrick Mitchell (originally AFC Wembley and Brentford), started Palace’s first game of the season, Friday’s defeat by Arsenal.

Earlier that afternoon at the Academy, Parish gives a tour to the influential shareholder David Blitzer, the American private equity investor, and two of his five children (both sons are keen high school soccer players). The Times tags along.

Blitzer asks very detailed questions of Parish about the new Desso pitch going in, the possibility of expanding the facility, and the education arrangements for those tutored in the well-equipped classrooms here.

Blitzer has a particular interest as he and his wife, Allison, have a foundation focusing on youth development through education and sport. Dougie Freedman, the Sporting Director and revered former player and manager, joins the tour and explains that academic records are better for those who attend the Palace school.

That’s important for Parish and the club. As the six-part Channel 4 documentary, Football Dreams: The Academy, highlights, the majority won’t make it — “it’s dog eat dog,” as Zaha says — but they will turn out good people.

The first episode follows three Under-12s, Kairo, Bola and Kayden, striving to survive the brutal retain-and-release system. The trio are a band of brothers, differing only in height and confidence, guided by a powerful dream and by strong mothers, working hard to find the £160 boots for growing boys.

What comes through in the documentary is the feeling of being constantly assessed, of your life almost depending on getting that scholarship, getting that contract, on the pressure on young shoulders, on praying you’ll grow. What also comes through is the care for the individual (and there are 200 from eight to 18 in the Palace Academy) by club staff.

The Under-12s coach, Phil Hingston, constantly encourages and gives great advice to the youngsters, including having a word with Kairo whose cockiness leads him to compare himself to Kylian Mbappé and Trent Alexander-Arnold. “Keep yourself humble,” Hingston suggests.

Hingston senses something underlying this overt bravado, and that is clear from when Kairo opens up on losing his father. It’s a poignant reminder that they’re only kids, dealing with life’s vicissitudes, let alone football’s. Hingston’s compassion for his Under-12s will surely be noted by parents of local talents.

“People here want the best for them,” Parish says, “the coaches, the staff, the tutors, the mentors, the safeguarding people are all willing to embrace them, help them, want them to succeed. If we spit out better young people than the people who arrive, more rounded and more capable of dealing with their life, then we’ve done a good job whether they make it as a footballer or not. Ninety-nine per cent don’t make it.”

It’s still a cattle market for some. Recruitment of young talent is still beset with certain clubs offering inducements. “There are still things that go on that shouldn’t go on that attract kids to go to places,” Parish says. Palace don’t play that game, simply focusing on now offering improved facilities. When Zaha joined Palace at 12, he changed in an upmarket shed and played on a modest pitch.

“We didn’t have a facility,” Parish says. “It wasn’t a close thing between our facility and Fulham’s or Chelsea’s. Now we’ve got everything that’s every bit as good.”

Throughout my conversations with Parish and Vieira, Zaha keeps coming up. “It is very, very important for supporters to see Wilfried, and to see what this club means to him,” Parish adds.

“How he performs week in, week out, is part of his [passionate] character. He knows how loved he is. He said recently that he genuinely feels like the Crystal Palace fans really do support you [through] thick and thin. It creates a connection. The other extreme would be a gang of mercenaries, hired guns that you’re bringing in who have no connection to the club.”

Palace are a well-run club but still need talent rising up to balance the books. “Oh, yes, yes, especially for a club like ourselves,” Vieira says. “Producing your own player will be really important and that’s why we need to have those young players coming through the Academy and we need to create this kind of pathway for them to play in the first-team.”

Vieira’s Chairman goes into detail. “Having Academy players [in the team is important] when you’re one of the low turnover clubs in the Premier League,” Parish says. “The next thing we have to do is the stadium [improvements]. We are in the bottom seven or eight teams by income in the division because of the size of our stadium.

“Even though we’ve been here [the Premier League] a while, and we get good sponsorship and we thank all those people that are with us, others have bigger stadiums. Leeds have a bigger stadium than us, Everton are building a bigger stadium. Newcastle have a bigger stadium and it [generates] between £15 million and £30 million more than us. West Ham is £60 million more a year in income. That’s a huge amount. What’s the best way of offsetting that?

“If I can get one player from the Academy that I don’t have to buy that’s £30 million we’re saving and it gets us closer to them. We’d really like to get to the Ajax model with their [stream of] Academy players.

“We have no ceiling on our ambition of how many players we want to get in the first-team but it’s a balance because we’ve got to stay in the league and sometimes we have to buy the ready-made thing, but Patrick as a manager is massively open to Academy players.” South London and proud. Home-grown is where the heart is.

• Football Dreams: The Academy starts on Thursday 11th August at 21:00 on Channel 4

With thanks to The Times for permission to publish the above in full. You can read the piece on The Times' website here.