"In 2024/2025, nearly 15 different nationalities were represented among the youth teams at the youth academy, surely a record." The emergence of national youth teams is disrupting the practices of youth academies. This is certainly the observation of Amaury Barlet, manager of the U16-U17 division at Olympique Lyonnais: "Experience in an international setting represents an opportunity to accelerate a player's individual development, capitalize on good performances at club level, or even revitalize a young player who is underperforming. It is therefore an opportunity for the club, which sees its young players equally valued and developing in the face of a higher daily and competitive balance of power." But for the coach, this can also "be a threat if individualized monitoring is not carried out and if the temporary drop in the level of intensity, opposition, and balance of power in training impacts the progress of the "non-selected," at a time when professional clubs are seeing their numbers in training centres decrease. "The stakes surrounding young players seem important and these professional clubs seem to have to adapt," warns the man who has been coaching OL's promising players for fourteen years. "They must be flexible, on a daily basis, in their organization and adapt to their context and their system. The trap is to lock themselves into planning, into processes, into fixed training groups or fixed staffs."
Brief
Amaury Barlet observes training at the OL Youth Academy / © @groupama-ol-academy (Instagram)