This debate has raged on for centuries. Where clubs like Real Madrid, Chelsea, and Manchester City are famous for buying, Barcelona, Manchester United (once upon a time) and Atletico Madrid have been raved for entrusting youth.
Should big clubs focus on buying players or promoting their own players？
PrinceParis
54
It's a hard question. There are some leagues where academy and making money is the main goal because they can't keep their star players particularly in smaller countries like the Netherlands and Portugal who focus heavily on the academy, prospect players and you have clubs that largely identify with the academy (Ajax, Benfica, Monaco, Athletic Bilbao). While on the other hand you have buying clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Manchester 2x and as such don't put much effort into bringing up youth and have "if we found the gem good for us, if not it's ok" policy. It's hard for academy players in big clubs to get into the first team because players there are already good and some player who is good will show up in these academy clubs and the big clubs will go after him over you because they believe that they are better than you. We could see this with De Jong and De Ligt this summer and Van De Beek. Example Juventus had Rugani and they still decided to go for De Ligt, Barcelona had players like Puig but decided to buy De Jong. Real Madrid has Valverde, Odegard but is still interested in Van De Beek. Academy players don't get many chances in big clubs and those that get a lot of game time in this academy clubs will get bought by bigger clubs.
Amanda-
51
They should do whatever they want. Soccer is a sport and also business at the same time