They helped to produce some of the world’s best football players but Newell’s Old Boys’ pathway from the academy to the first team is now filled with potholes, writes Jamie Ralph.
There’s a well-shared theory amongst fans of Newell’s Old Boys that for the senior team to be doing well, it needs to have a core of players that have been produced in the academy. It’s backed up by data and history. The club has won seven titles in Argentina and those seven winning teams have always relied on a strong squad hinged with experienced homegrown players but supported by young academy upstarts.
Not only that, but every manager who has led Newell’s to a national league has been an ex-player who came through the academy: Juan Carlos Montes, José Yudica, Marcelo Bielsa, Américo Gallego and Tata Martino. Gallego is the only one who was not born in the club’s home city of Rosario, but he joined Newell’s as a youth player before returning to win the title as manager in 2004.
When Newell’s Old Boys last won the championship in 2013, the vast majority of players used in that season by Tata Martino had started their careers at the club.
There were 23 in total who came from the academy. Players like Maxi Rodríguez and Gabriel Heinze had returned to the club after decorated careers in Europe while young players like Fabián Muñoz and Martín Tonso were tasting professional football for the first time, playing minor but important roles during that season of glory.
There’s an argument to be made that the Newell’s Old Boys academy, known as “Las Malvinas” is the most famous in the world. While not solely down to the fact that Lionel Messi, widely regarded as the sport’s greatest ever player, started his career at the academy, its roll of honour is a list of players, some who became better known as managers, who are central to the history of football in Argentina. There’s Bielsa, Valdano, Batistuta, Pochettino, Scaloni, Samuel, Heinze and so many more to mention. Not bad for a club that only won its first title in the 1970s and has captured just two league titles in the last 30 years.
But the conveyor belt has suddenly slowed down. While a small number of talents moulded at Newell’s are still valuable assets at the top levels of world football, a colossal change in modern football scouting and the financial rewards and capital that are associated with the quest for success in Europe means that the academy’s best players never reach the first team.
Enzo Barrenechea, who will play for Aston Villa in this season’s Premier League, left Newell’s without a senior team appearance the moment he turned 18, having been watched while playing for the club’s youth teams for years.
It’s not just a problem at Newell’s. Since the success of Alexis Mac Allister and Julián Alvárez in England, Premier League clubs have suddenly identified Argentine academies as hot sources of talent. Chelsea’s new signing Aarón Anselmino had played just 5 senior games for Boca Juniors before the London club came calling.
The sharks of Europe are not the only culprits in the damaged pathway to the first team. Looking inward, there have been obvious shortfalls in talent identification within the club over the last ten years.
Manchester United’s Lisandro Martínez, a World Cup winner with Argentina and one of Europe’s leading defenders was judged to be ‘too small’ to make it as a professional at Newell’s.
After a few senior games at the Estadio Marcelo Bielsa, where he did nothing to convince the Newell’s fans that he didn’t have what it takes, he was surprisingly sold to Defensa y Justicia, a league rival in Argentina. They noticed his potential and later made a large amount of money selling him on to Ajax before he joined Manchester United.
The person or department at Newell’s that made the call to sell Martínez is a point of contention. Some suggest former manager Juan Manuel Llop, himself a former academy player and title-winning player under Marcelo Bielsa, was to blame. Llop has constantly denied that Martínez’s height had anything to do with the decision to let him go. In a recent interview for a publication in Argentina, Llop said: “It’s all bullshit, I just got promoted with Platense with Nico Salazar and he’s shorter than Lisandro, so there you go”.
Llop further explained that Martínez made the decision himself to seek a transfer after being told that he would be used in the Newell’s senior team as a left-back, rather than his preferred centre-back position.
Martínez is the highest-profile player to have been deemed not of the required ability to be a success at Newell’s but there are others who have proved La Lepra (the club were coined “The Lepers” in its early years after supporting a charity match for leprosy) wrong and who may have made an impact in return for a small bit of faith.
Carlos Rotondi won a trophy with Defensa y Justicia before moving to Cruz Azul in Mexico after he was judged to be surplus to requirements at Newell’s. Aníbal Moreno played just 23 times for Newell’s before he was sold to Racing. He’s now one of the leading midfielders in Brazil and a champion with Palmeiras.
When the best talents are taken out at an early age or sold without a reasonable opportunity to impress, Newell’s are left with a group of young players who rank somewhere in the middle between not good enough and destined for Europe.
Players like Juan Sforza, once scouted by Barcelona but who recently moved to Vasco da Gama in Brazil after playing nearly 100 games for Newell’s between the ages of 18 and 20. Like Marcos Portillo, sold by Newell’s to Talleres after a few promising runs in the first-team. He’s now a regular in the Copa Libertadores, a competition Newell’s last played in ten years ago.
And then there are players like Francisco “Panchito” González, who Newell’s have persisted with for years without tangible reward. Panchito has scored 6 goals in 93 games and still finds himself as one of the first names on the team sheet throughout an otherwise unremarkable period in the history of the club. With rumours that he is about to be sold before the upcoming transfer deadline in Argentina, González’s departure would all but signal the metaphorical nail in the coffin for the club’s proud tradition of reinforcing the senior team with academy graduates.
Like most clubs in Argentina, Newell’s have reacted to the recent lack of success by constantly changing managers in the hope of striking gold. They’ve tried managers with deep connections to the club, like Gabriel Heinze and Fernando Gamboa and others who have been successful elsewhere like Frank Kudelka and Mauricio Larriera.
They’ve even gone for a big name in Europe. Despite his track record as an assistant to Diego Simeone, Germán Burgos had little experience as a manager but was hired by Newell’s in 2021 as another roll of the dice. His overwhelming faith in the Newell’s academy saw him give countless debuts to youth players who have since disappeared but his tenure lasted just 15 games after defeats to Sarmiento in the cup and a bruising 3-0 defeat in the derby against Rosario Central.
The club has tried buying players from outside of Argentina and pairing them in teams with academy players. They’ve tried building teams of a mix of academy players and domestic transfers, putting them alongside highly experienced legends like Maxi Rodríguez and the current club captain, Éver Banega, who started his footballing journey in the Newell’s academy and returned to his first love this year.
Since Diego Osella’s title challenge as manager of Newell’s in the 2016/17 season, perhaps the last time Newell’s could be considered genuine contenders in Argentina, a reliance on academy players has been the order of the day.
That is until now.
2024 has seen a new departure in terms of both Newell’s’ transfer strategy and its preferred squad make-up. The return of Ariel Michaloutsos, a former Newell’s scout who was poached by River Plate before being re-signed by Newell’s President Ignacio Astore as the club’s Director of Football, was hailed by Newell’s fans as a return to the club values and ethos that had proved fruitful in the past. Trust in the academy, a team of homegrown players led by a homegrown manager. The truth has been the opposite.
The reign of Michaloutsos has seen two managers appointed with no connection to Newell’s – Mauricio Larriera and current coach Sebastián Méndez. Under Michaloutsos, the club has signed 10 players in 2024. While experienced duo Éver Banega and Juan Manuel García have both European pedigree and a history with Newell’s, Michaloutsos has bought a number of young players from other clubs in South America, to fill squad places normally occupied by players from the Newell’s academy.
$4 million (USD), a huge figure for a club like Newell’s, was paid to Nacional of Uruguay for striker Juán Ignacio Ramírez. Fernando Cardozo and Saúl Salcedo were brought in from Paraguay. Salcedo has been earmarked to take the place of Ian Glavinovich, a young defender from the academy who was outstanding in his debut season.
Young Argentine talents like Lucas Besozzi have arrived, along with a number of players coming into their prime years such as Rodrigo Fernández Cedrés from Santos and Ignacio Méndez from Vélez.
If it wasn’t any clearer that the club has decided to go in a new direction without relying on talent from their own academy, Newell’s have made room for these new signings by overseeing a clearout of players who came through Las Malvinas.
Decent fees were accepted for Sforza, Portillo, Ramiro Sordo and the tricky wide player Brian Aguirre who joined Boca Juniors. Other players who have been at Newell’s since childhood like Nazareno Funez, Lisandro Montenegro, Facundo Mansilla, Genaro Rossi and Guillermo Balzi were sent out on loan.
With the recent re-start of the Liga Profesional in Argentina after the winter break, the implementation of the new strategy was plain to see. In the 1-0 defeat to Rosario Central in the Clásico Rosarino on 10 August 2024, Panchito González was the only player to start for Newell’s who had come through its famous academy. Eleven days later, in the defeat to Central Córdoba (Santiago del Estero) which saw Newell’s knocked out of the Copa Argentina, none of the starters had come through the academy. The team was formed entirely of players signed from other clubs. This is unheard of at an institution so famous for developing talent.
It’s still early days for the club’s new approach to recruitment but the early signs haven’t been good. The current squad has a large cohort of players who have never played together and are generally new to the league. Sebastián Méndez, already on the verge of being sacked, hasn’t had time to settle on a preferred line-up but already looks to be in deep trouble with Newell’s having only won 3 of their opening 11 league fixtures.
In the panic that has followed their elimination from the Copa Argentina, it seems that Ariel Michaloutsos, the Director of Football who led the controversial recruitment drive, already has one foot out the door after he was seen standing with the fans in the stands rather than with club officials as is normal protocol.
Although under the current approach, there looks to be barriers to the first team for bright academy prospects, there are still signs that Newell’s have a number of future talents. The Newell’s Reserves, the youth team directly below the senior team, are currently top of Group B with five wins from five in the Campeonato de Reserva. Coach Ricardo Lunari, a former title-winning player under Bielsa and the most likely to be offered the first team job when Méndez is sacked, has had a very solid record as Reserves manager and his team’s form and results stand in stark contrast to the men’s senior team.
Whether there is still an open door for those young players in the Reserves to make their way as senior professionals with Newell’s is now under scrutiny.
There’s no doubt that there will be another Lisandro Martínez or Enzo Barrenechea in the future, plucked from the Newell’s academy to reinforce a European giant. But will The Lepers ever enjoy the fruits of their labour again at domestic senior level and do what Gallego, Bielsa and Martino did in bringing academy players through to win trophies for Newell’s?
At the moment, that possibility seems further away than ever.
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