The new generation will give the club great results
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
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On April 23, the FC Shakhtar Academy Director Jorge Raffo marks his birthday
We talked to him about the success of the teams, about the projects for the development of young football players and the Academy’s strategic goals.
- Happy Birthday, Jorge! The result of your first year at Shakhtar was four league titles of the Academy teams. What can we expect from the second season?
- In the first season, the objective was to return the Shakhtar teams to the leading positions - the places that the club deserves. The goal is to get the Academy players into the first team, so, for me, the moves of Mudryk, Trubin, Bondar, Korniienko to the senior team is already the most important championship this year. I am very grateful to Paulo Fonseca and his coaching staff for the good attitude we feel to ourselves, for the chance they gave to the young players. We have common goals – to keep Shakhtar at the top of Ukrainian and European football through the Academy and the first team. Now, all of our children's and youth teams go in the leading positions and compete for gold medals, and it’s doubly important to continue proving that a whole generation of the guys aged 13 to 16 years old is coming and pushing the rest up. These young boys will give the club great results, just as it happened to the players born in 1996, because many of them managed to prove themselves in the senior team. Seeing this today, I am filled with joy and great expectations!
- What is the main thing that you have managed to change or improve at the Academy over these nearly two years?
- The arrival of a new director to the Academy has common goals - to lead players to the first team and simultaneously claim results in the leagues and international competitions, also increasing the representation of the club in the national teams. In terms of the level and number of players in the select teams of different ages, in terms of the quality of coaches and infrastructure, we have become the best in Ukraine these days. The next objective is to continue improving those aspects in order to remain in the top spots and to develop the players who will deliver increasingly better results in the UEFA Youth League and who will subsequently be able to make it to the first team. It is important for a coach to progress himself so that his players grow, and the director needs to develop himself and improve the performance of each team, coach, and player.
- Currently, Shakhtar has the largest representation in various national teams over recent years. Is this also an indicator of Academy’s progress?
- Of course, it is. We have built our work in such a way that every team has some younger players. For example, Shakhtar U21 have the players born in 2000 and 2001, in U19 there are 17 or even 16-year-old guys. We want to speed up their learning because the best way to develop talents is to make them compete with the senior guys. This way, they gain experience quicker, reaching the next level earlier and being able to qualify for a place in the first team at a young age. Of course, this is the easiest way to evaluate the work of the Academy - just look at the number of internationals two years ago, when we arrived, and the club’s representation these days. It makes me happy and it makes me feel a sense of pride.
- How does finding young talents for the Academy work?
- Oh, this is a very large-scale process! We collaborate with our scouting unit headed by Jose Boto, the Academy’s senior scout Ivan Kotsyuba and the Shakhtar Social foundation. A whole strategic project has been created, specialists continuously hold trials for young footballers at the Come On, Let’s Play! and Talent Day tournaments, trying not to miss a single talent. We are constantly developing our scouting, travelling the country in order to have a complete picture and to know about the skills of each player. This is a team work, in which all the employees of the Academy are important: coaches, educators, technical staff, kitchen and laundry personnel - those responsible for the life of young football players here, in Shchaslyve, and at branches in different cities: Donetsk, Mariupol, Zaporizhya ... These people help players develop because the top club should have the top players!
- Happy Birthday, Jorge! The result of your first year at Shakhtar was four league titles of the Academy teams. What can we expect from the second season?
- In the first season, the objective was to return the Shakhtar teams to the leading positions - the places that the club deserves. The goal is to get the Academy players into the first team, so, for me, the moves of Mudryk, Trubin, Bondar, Korniienko to the senior team is already the most important championship this year. I am very grateful to Paulo Fonseca and his coaching staff for the good attitude we feel to ourselves, for the chance they gave to the young players. We have common goals – to keep Shakhtar at the top of Ukrainian and European football through the Academy and the first team. Now, all of our children's and youth teams go in the leading positions and compete for gold medals, and it’s doubly important to continue proving that a whole generation of the guys aged 13 to 16 years old is coming and pushing the rest up. These young boys will give the club great results, just as it happened to the players born in 1996, because many of them managed to prove themselves in the senior team. Seeing this today, I am filled with joy and great expectations!
- What is the main thing that you have managed to change or improve at the Academy over these nearly two years?
- The arrival of a new director to the Academy has common goals - to lead players to the first team and simultaneously claim results in the leagues and international competitions, also increasing the representation of the club in the national teams. In terms of the level and number of players in the select teams of different ages, in terms of the quality of coaches and infrastructure, we have become the best in Ukraine these days. The next objective is to continue improving those aspects in order to remain in the top spots and to develop the players who will deliver increasingly better results in the UEFA Youth League and who will subsequently be able to make it to the first team. It is important for a coach to progress himself so that his players grow, and the director needs to develop himself and improve the performance of each team, coach, and player.
- Currently, Shakhtar has the largest representation in various national teams over recent years. Is this also an indicator of Academy’s progress?
- Of course, it is. We have built our work in such a way that every team has some younger players. For example, Shakhtar U21 have the players born in 2000 and 2001, in U19 there are 17 or even 16-year-old guys. We want to speed up their learning because the best way to develop talents is to make them compete with the senior guys. This way, they gain experience quicker, reaching the next level earlier and being able to qualify for a place in the first team at a young age. Of course, this is the easiest way to evaluate the work of the Academy - just look at the number of internationals two years ago, when we arrived, and the club’s representation these days. It makes me happy and it makes me feel a sense of pride.
- How does finding young talents for the Academy work?
- Oh, this is a very large-scale process! We collaborate with our scouting unit headed by Jose Boto, the Academy’s senior scout Ivan Kotsyuba and the Shakhtar Social foundation. A whole strategic project has been created, specialists continuously hold trials for young footballers at the Come On, Let’s Play! and Talent Day tournaments, trying not to miss a single talent. We are constantly developing our scouting, travelling the country in order to have a complete picture and to know about the skills of each player. This is a team work, in which all the employees of the Academy are important: coaches, educators, technical staff, kitchen and laundry personnel - those responsible for the life of young football players here, in Shchaslyve, and at branches in different cities: Donetsk, Mariupol, Zaporizhya ... These people help players develop because the top club should have the top players!