When it came to developing a young player, Sporting Lisbon had its own youth-development system.
The methods included, but were not limited to: the Second Team, loans, sales with buyback clauses...
Different methods were used for different players. The key was which approach suited the player better while serving the club's interests.
Su Dong was only seventeen, and it was extremely difficult for any seventeen-year-old player to break into the First Team.
Even a talent like Quaresma had been only one month shy of eighteen when he first appeared for Sporting Lisbon.
Cristiano Ronaldo's talent was good enough, wasn't it?
He was the only young player in Sporting Lisbon's history who, in a single season, had leaped directly from the under-16 team to U18 to the Second Team and then to the First Team. Yet up to now, he still had not played even a single minute for the First Team.
The risks in youth development were enormous.
Or rather, professional football itself was an extremely high-risk industry.
For example, Niculae had been all-conquering in the Romanian league, but after coming to Sporting Lisbon, he had failed to adapt, even suffering injuries that forced him into a long spell on the sidelines. That deal had cost Sporting Lisbon dearly.
If the team were not currently performing well in both the Portuguese Super League and the Portuguese Cup, Boloni would certainly have come under pressure, even questioning, from the Board of Directors because of Niculae's transfer.
By the same logic, no one knew what would happen in this world tomorrow.
Young players were even more changeable.
Perhaps they performed brilliantly this season, only to be a complete mess next season. Who could know?
At seventeen, everything was full of unpredictability. Maybe he would succeed in the future; maybe he would fall