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When Jason Wilcox ran Manchester City's academy, he made it his mission to put up pictures of every first team debut in the training ground so players could walk past it every day as daily motivation . Thomas Krucken has welcomed another five faces to the wall since he took over in 2023, but the last marker is now always the same. There is no picture, just two words on a coloured background : Who's next? It is typical of Krucken's style and management to marry recognition with a challenge, a message that runs right up to Pep Guardiola that there is always improvement to be made. What's more, it appears to be working. This season, four academy players have trained with the first team every day and the Under-21s usually work on the next pitch so that Guardiola can choose whoever he needs for a particular session. In addition, Divine Mukasa has been with the seniors basically all season and marked his debut at Huddersfield last month with an assist. Another expert in individual player development has just been headhunted as the programme for developing youngsters becomes more individualised, and he sits down regularly with Krucken, head of academy coaching Jan-Moritz Lichte, first team coaches Kolo Toure and Pep Lijnders, and sporting director Hugo Viana to discuss the progress. As much as everyone wants to know who is next, Krucken wants another challenge to be in the heads of his young players: Who's first? "We have the ambition to develop a Ballon d'Or winner so in the future I'd like to have a sign for that. We want to be the best football academy in the UK and across Europe so we are an academy to develop players for the top level and we'd like to develop a Ballon d'Or winner one day," he told the Manchester Evening News . "It's highly ambitious but it is high motivation for us. I think the reality is the motivation, so the pathway from Nico O'Reilly is the most important. "Last season in Bratislava in October, Nico O'Reilly was part of the EDS team and one year later everybody sees there is a pathway and this is so important for players and staff to see the door to the first team is open and that performance and development dictates their pathway. Everybody has the opportunity because they really keep an eye on these players as part of the vision of the football club. "It is not that the academy is isolated from the first team, we are one with the same methodology and principles. We have a pool of people who talk daily about the programme, performances, behaviours. "What Pep always says is better people make better players so culture is very important for us and this is why it's a pleasure to work as close to them. We have one idea and we work so close and this is very beneficial for the players." City are very proud of the Mancunian core running through their team. James Trafford, Rico Lewis, Phil Foden, and Nico O'Reilly are all bonafide members of the first team squad having come through every age group in the academy, while even if he didn't Erling Haaland gets points as a boyhood Blue. Almost as important as getting talent through the door at the first opportunity though is spotting players towards the end of the academy journey. A rule change after Brexit banned clubs from signing the best 16-year-olds from Europe, so the new battleground for City and other Premier League clubs is to find the best talent at that age without needing a passport - less Pablo Maffeo and Adrian Bernabe and more Liam Delap and Morgan Rogers. City did not see the best of either but they made tens of millions in profit and are not short of promising talent that head of academy recruitment Sam Fagbemi and his team have landed. Max Alleyne (Watford), Harrison Miles (Southampton), Ryan McAidoo ( Chelsea ) and Mukasa (West Ham) have all caught the eye of Guardiola since they took the big decision to move up to the City Football Academy. Krucken may prefer to get youngsters in to learn the City way as early as possible, but he is also intent on his future player programme that is designed to give Guardiola and the first team what they need in a few years as shifts in the game are predicted. Long throws are back in fashion this year, for example, and Krucken is taking a meticulous approach to work out how to stay ahead of trends. If the game changes, it makes sense that City's needs may change and they have to be alive to the best talents in every age group as all of the top academies battle for the best young talent. "It's a very competitive market, and changed post-Brexit," said Krucken. "We have a clear picture of how the player of the future looks like and what the criteria are to play the game in a couple of years. "This is why we changed the programme so that the players get now what they need in a couple of years. The players have football, technical, tactical, psych, social. "They have a lot to give and it's on us to give them the right challenges that they can develop in the best possible way in the right interface to the first team and then performance dictates their pathway and Pep, Pep, Kolo and Hugo really keep an eye on these players. "They have to perform and develop but we are quite confident that they do. "Our ambition is always to bring the players into the academy as soon as possible. We restructured the junior academy and everything around the foundation phase to make sure we get the best talents as early as possible and we have three advantages: The Three P's - pathway, programme and people. At the end, it's about the people." Mukasa has certainly made the most of his pathway and programme, and shown enough character to stick around Guardiola's first team. If any youngster is to get minutes at Swansea, it will be the 18-year-old playmaker. He recently dropped back down to the academy side with Rayan Cherki and Omar Marmoush returning from injury, and while he missed a penalty in the UEFA Youth League defeat to Villarreal he looked a class above with his confidence and classy ability to keep the ball on a string; his goal is well worth a watch on YouTube and he was described by academy staff as 'on a different level' in a game featuring some of the best Under-19s in Europe. For all the challenges that Krucken and his staff can set for their youngsters, there is nothing that can match the sight of an academy player bridging the gap to the first team in front of everyone's eyes. It is why there was such pride to see three more debuts at Huddersfield, and why Mukasa is the latest to carry the torch for an academy aiming to produce the very best in the world. "The development and performance of their players dictate their pathway and currently we have some good examples, like Divine," said Krucken. "Everyone was really proud in the academy at Huddersfield that so many academy players were involved in the squad. "It was a success built over years from many people. The next day in the academy I looked into so many proud eyes because so many staff members have been there over the last years and been part of their journey. "This is the motivation for everybody to develop even more players for those level."
