Having abandoned big-spending, Monaco, who visit Manchester City in the Champions League on Tuesday, are reaping the rewards of home-grown talent

When Monaco cut their transfer budget in 2014, having spent £140m in previous windows to catch up with Paris Saint-Germain, few expected them to supersede their rivals any time soon.

The vice-president, Vadim Vasilyev, said at the time the club would focus on their academy rather than expensive transfer targets to complement Radamel Falcao but no one expected the ageing Colombian to lead Europe’s best attack a couple of seasons later.

After all, this was the flagship club of the richest principality in the world, boasting the highest density of billionaires, including one who purchased a controlling stake in the club in 2011 pledging to outspend his title rivals. Yet success came only after Monaco relinquished their pursuit of high-profile players and turned back to their academy.

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The statistics are beyond expectations. With 59 points and 76 goals scored, Leonardo Jardim’s side not only occupy pole position in the title race but are the most devastating attack on the continent. There are no superstars in this lineup, names like Valère Germain or Kylian Mbappé have only just started to become widely known, yet they have been famous for a long time at La Turbie, Monaco’s academy.

Monaco are finally challenging PSG for the Ligue 1 title this season and a transfer between both clubs last summer goes a long way to explaining it, yet had nothing to do with a player. Bertrand Reuzeau, one of the most respected youth coaches in France, was appointed the academy director last June after 11 years with PSG. For someone credited with bringing through the youngsters who featured in the defeat of Barcelona last week, he keeps a low profile in describing his new influence.

“Everything here already worked well before my arrival,” he says. To understand that statement, it is necessary to understand the peculiar microstate where Monaco was founded.

Imported from England to France’s northern shores at the start of last century, football reached Monaco only in the 1920s and it took four decades for the side to register some success in 1961, the season when their iconic jersey designed by Grace Kelly, princess of Monaco, was first introduced.

The principality’s tiny population, mostly consisting of expats, was never really interested in the club and their 18,000-seat stadium, large enough to host half of the city’s inhabitants, was often left empty. Monegasque citizens, forbidden from accessing the Monte Carlo casino’s gaming rooms, were heavily encouraged to watch football at Stade Louis II but interest hardly took off.

The lowest average attendance in France translated to perennially weak matchday and merchandising revenues. The principality was wealthy but the football club suffered from insufficient resources.

As the club wallowed between first and second divisions, a new president arrived in 1975, setting out to follow the examples of Sochaux and Nantes, successful clubs with their own academies.

The French football federation had founded its first national institute for young prospects, and Monaco’s president, Jean-Louis Campora, hired the institute’s head coach Gérard Banide to create an academy in a former quarry, a few miles inland from the Mediterranean seafront. A consequence of the principality’s demography was the absence of a local population from which to pick youngsters, so the academy could not offer the same early schooling as other French clubs. “There are not enough kids playing football in the area, so we do not have grassroots teams from under-nine upwards like elsewhere,” Reuzeau says. “Our graduates join aged 15 from national institutes like INF Clairefontaine and we only pick a dozen when other clubs pick up to 30.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Stade Louis II perched in Monaco. Photograph: Patrice Coppee/AFP

Since it is impossible to recruit players younger than 14 outside their area of origin, Monaco were forced to find youngsters at the latest stage of their development. Yet this became a strength rather than a weakness, forcing the club to scout for the best players and strengthen their scouting network around France when other clubs developed their international scope.

Although the principality is nominally independent from France, Monaco needed French national centres to thrive. Arsène Wenger joined in 1987 and brought in Lilian Thuram, Thierry Henry and Emmanuel Petit.

Five Monaco academy players to watch Loïc Badiashile (goalkeeper, France U18) Franco Antonucci (winger, Belgium U17) Adrien Bongiovanni (winger, Belgium U17) Irvin Cardona (striker, France U20) Moussa Sylla (striker, France U18)

The club successfully made up for the absence of younger teams. By taking more time to select players, Monaco could make sure prospective candidates were adequate. “The players who join us spent their youth with their families,” Reuzeau says. “We start talking to them aged 12 or 13 and use the delay as a strength, since youngsters can remain in their environment of origin longer before joining.”

Presidents, coaches and players came and went but this philosophy still yields results today. Although he snubbed Arsenal last summer, Mbappé walks in the footsteps of Henry, having both graduated from Clairefontaine before moving to the French Riviera. “When we speak to top talents they believe in our project because of the youth that is visible across the first team,” Reuzeau adds.

Monaco are Ligue 1 leaders with the third youngest side in the league, led by the second youngest coach. As a consequence of this careful approach, academy graduates join at a later age but they tend to stay later too. Henry, Thuram and Petit, World Cup winners all, joined aged 15 and completed at least 100 league games each before moving abroad.

The new wave of Mbappé, Thomas Lemar and Tiemoué Bakayoko have been grabbing headlines this season. All have attracted interest from Manchester City but their academy director does not seem too worried. “We only have to show them statistics of French players who left early to go to England, that generally does the trick,” Reuzeau says.

Five priorities of the Monaco academy

Scouting: “What I learnt during my time at Monaco is that the club had the best youth scouting network in France,” says Tor-Kristian Karlsen, the first sporting director to serve the current owners. “Players down to the age of 11 or 12 were tracked all over the country. They have highly qualified scouts in all the regions and the identification process is probably the single most important factor in the work of an academy.”

Diversity: “We want different profiles for one position, to avoid creating direct competition for every spot,” Reuzeau explains. “When the talents arrive at La Turbie, there are excellent coaches to work on improving their skills as footballers and development of human beings. The support network is also first class,” adds Karlsen.

Specialisation: Academy graduates learn the basics of the possession game and transitional game, playing in various positions until the under-17 team, when they specialise in one position. The best academy players are mixed with seasoned professionals in the B team, who play in France’s fourth tier, the highest amateur division.

Off the pitch evaluation: “We often refuse to approach prospects with a poor record outside the pitch and try to groom the individuals as well as the players,” says Reuzeau. “Each academy graduate undertakes associative work to understand people of the same age who live in different conditions.”

Big data: “Clubs all have similar data on their players, but we try to differentiate ourselves in the way we present it to players. Our academy graduates provide feedback on their training loads,” says Reuzeau. “We give them technical analysis of their games within 48 hours of the final whistle and a mobile application is developed to access their data from their smartphone.”