A study on the Portuguese League of Basketball — Part 4
Portuguese youngsters
The conversation around Portuguese players and especially the young ones is a recurrent theme. Some think we don’t give them enough opportunities, others claim opportunities are earned, not given. I am going to try and shine some light on this matter and see how teams use their young players. For this study, I have considered players aged 21 years old and younger in the respective season.
It’s clear that most of the young players in the league come from the teams’ own academy. Pretty rarely do they come from better situations, with the clubs choosing to sign them from lower leagues in Portugal. The problem with the academies is that the better players are usually signed in their youth by the best teams in Portugal. This means that the non-big clubs don’t usually have the talent in their academy to fuel their first team. Signing players from lower leagues is a good move though, as there is some hidden talent in there.
Most teams are able to retain their young players but, as we’ll see in the next article, this is caused by them not having playing time. The number of players leaving and ending up with no team is worrying and so is its growth in the last few years. On the other hand, players leaving for worse situations can be a good thing, especially the ones leaving on loan to find playing time and develop. The almost null amount of players leaving for better situations is also concerning and should be a point of discussion for these teams, as we are not adding value to our young players’ careers.
Portugal is clearly doing a disservice to its younger players. Our teams can’t really find good situations and good environments for their development. But this is a problem that originates earlier. There are real problems on our youth competitions and development and we can’t create the conditions for them to reach the professional level with enough quality to compete with the players there, especially the foreigners. That work must be done earlier on.
