Samaden: "The development of our young players comes first"

MILAN -  As a guest at the Triennale in Milan, the head of the Nerazzurri’s Elite Academy Roberto Samaden had his say on the debate linked to Women's Football on the final day of the Milano CalcioCity initiative, an event dedicated to culture and the game of football. After speaking about this, he answered questions from the media: “Our objective every year is to develop our young players. Therefore, our expectations are linked to what our aims are. We know that this year will be different compared to previous years; we have a young team that needs to work hard and improve. The coach has to think about working calmly with his players and then the results will come. “It’s never been the case that our sole objective is just to win, but we also want to work hard and develop our footballers. This has led to us winning titles. And even when we didn’t win anything, we managed to get young players ready to play professional football. This is ultimately our goal,” continued Samaden. As regards the large amount of Nerazzurri appearing for Serie B teams, Samaden had this to say: “It shows that the work that we have done has been successful. Our objective is to ensure that our young players are ready to play football at a high level; this has to be the result of our daily work. The coaches we’ve had in recent years have allowed us to train and work as if we were the First Team.

As regards youth competition at a European level: “We also see the Youth League through the prism of developing our players. Compared to the past, the level of competition is much higher today. There are many more teams, although this doesn’t detract from the great success Andrea Stramaccioni has had on the bench. I repeat: football results are not the main objective of our Elite Academy. We have had success by primarily thinking about the development of our young footballers.

“It’s a pleasure to see our youngsters involved at various levels. It’s the culmination of the development process that they have undergone in our Elite Academy. It would be more enjoyable to see them debut in the Inter shirt, but it still brings us great satisfaction,” concluded Roberto Samaden.