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Jewels of the Riviera: Monaco’s renowned football academy continues to produce some of France’s biggest stars

By SAMUEL PETREQUIN AP Sports Writer

MONACO (AP) — Years before a statue was erected in his honor in the southeast corner of Emirates Stadium, the young and ambitious Thierry Henry honed his skills hundreds of miles from London in a warmer, sunnier spot on the French Street Riviera.

The AS Monaco training academy.

Henry, who went on to become Arsenal’s all-time top goalscorer, is one of the many French football stars to emerge from the famous training program. Others include Lilian Thuram, David Trezeguet, Kylian Mbappé and Henry’s Arsenal teammate Emmanuel Petit.

Several academy graduates are in the Monaco squad and travel to London to play Arsenal in the Champions League on Wednesday, including Maghnes Akliouche and Eliesse Ben Seghir.

Ben Seghir, 19, is already a Moroccan international and Monaco’s top scorer in the French league. Akliouche’s technical brilliance has not gone unnoticed and the 22-year-old is on the radar of major European clubs.

“We supply the first team with good players from the academy every season,” Monaco CEO Thiago Scuro told The Associated Press during an interview at the club. “It’s a very advantageous setup.”

21-year-old Soungoutou Magassa, who leads the midfield and can play in defense, is another product of Monaco’s youth program.

Originally from the Paris region, Magassa was discovered at the age of 12. A silver medalist with France at the Paris Olympics, he recently scored his first professional goal against Benfica in the Champions League.

“I wasn’t necessarily the strongest at the academy, the one with the brightest future,” Magassa told the AP. “But we were very close, helped each other and had the same goal. There was a lot of talent and it showed today. A lot of us turned pro.”

It is unclear whether Monaco coach Adi Hütter’s young team will emulate the class of 2017, when then-emerging Mbappé’s Monaco beat Manchester City and shined past Borussia Dortmund to reach the semi-finals of the Champions League. But there are clear signs that the club’s commitment to promoting young talent is once again paying off.

After five games in the league phase of the Champions League, Monaco are the highest-placed French team, level on points with Arsenal and well placed to progress to the knockout stages.

“We want to play aggressive, very dynamic football and create lots of chances, that’s part of Monaco’s DNA,” said Scuro. “We recruit players for this type of football.”

Monaco DNA

Monaco celebrated its 100th anniversary last summer, but it wasn’t until the mid-1950s that the city really took off in the tiny French Riviera city-state best known for its billionaires.

Because Monaco is so small, there is no league of its own. Its only professional football club – whose full name is Association Sportive de Monaco Football Club – has always played in the French league system.

For a long time, the small population and lack of football-playing youth in the area was an obstacle. The founding of the academy in 1975, called Diagonale – a nod to the diagonal stripe on the team’s jersey designed by Princess Grace – changed the dynamic.

The youth academy, founded by former president Jean-Louis Campora, recruited some of the best coaches from the French national football institute. Campora quickly convinced parents of young soccer players across France that this was the best place for their children to develop.

At a time when foreign players were limited to three per team, the academy helped the French league-playing club establish itself as a powerhouse. Monaco has won eight national league titles and five French Cups and reached the Champions League final in 2004.

Turn hopefuls into professionals

With an annual budget of about 10 million euros ($10.6 million), the academy has trained many players who have gone on to represent their countries as professionals. Potential recruits are assessed by around 20 people before the admission decision is made.

“It’s a beautiful spider web,” said Sébastien Muet, head of the academy.

The academy takes in U17 players – some as young as 14 – who can stay at the center until they are 21 to 22 years old. All are boys. Although Monaco has a women’s team, it is a small, separate entity with no connection to the men’s club.

Around 55 trainees are currently enrolled at the center, which is located just a stone’s throw from Monaco’s Louis II Stadium. The students sleep, eat, study and receive medical care in the building.

In addition to the games, they train between 12 and 14 hours per week. They attend secondary school 22 hours a week and are looked after by teachers hired by the association.

When AP visited the center last week, a group of students were working intensively on the topic “The Arctic, an Attractive and Fragile Polar Environment.”

For Muet, a priority is to help the young players find the “right balance” between sport and studies.

“We want to help them become skilled thinkers and analyzers so they can be successful in whatever field they choose for their careers,” he told AP.

The busy schedule doesn’t leave much time for relaxation and leisure, apart from playing on the Playstation. Meanwhile, director of studies Virginie Barilaro-Gollino is trying her best to broaden her students’ horizons.

“We don’t have the time, but we try to organize as many extracurricular activities as possible. Such as visits to the Monte Carlo Ballets. Or bakery competitions,” she said.

A long-term strategy

Promoting local players to the professional team also contributes to healthy finances.

“You don’t have to spend money to go abroad,” Scuro said. “You have the solution in-house.”

However, it wasn’t always obvious.

A decade ago, Monaco spent big money signing some of football’s biggest stars. The club made headlines when they signed Radamel Falcao, James Rodriguez and Joao Moutinho for a combined transfer fee of €130 million.

At the time, Monaco seemed determined to fight for domestic supremacy with big-financer PSG. But faced with a UEFA investigation into overspending on transfers and wages under Financial Fair Play, owner Dmitry Rybolovlev – a Russian billionaire who invested €1m to bring Monaco back to the top flight in 2013 – made it clear the club was focusing on the Instead, development will focus on young talent.

Rybolovlev also invested €55 million to build a modern training complex where the first team and reserve players train.

The club now generates huge income from the sale of players it has developed either directly from the academy or after recruiting other players. Mbappé was sold to PSG for 180 million euros, while Aurélien Tchouaméni moved to Real Madrid for 80 million euros in 2022.

This year, Monaco ranked third behind Benfica and Real Madrid in the top 50 clubs that, since July 2015, generated the most income from the transfer of players who had graduated from their youth academy, at around 285 million euros.

Looking at the current squad of academy players, this strategy should continue to pay off. During the international break in October, no fewer than 20 players from the professional squad and academy were called up by their national teams.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.