Hojbjerg Underlines Why Bayern Munich Can't Be a Mega-Club and Promote Youth

"I think the time has come for me to go a different way," Pierre Hojbjerg told Kicker magazine (h/t FIFA.com) on Monday in an interview in which he explained his desire to leave Bayern Munich.

The 19-year-old made his debut for the senior Denmark national team in May and has since become a mainstay in Morten Olsen's team.

At club level, however, his fortunes have been entirely different. Despite club chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge declaring in May that the player had a place in the Bayern team and would not be allowed to leave on loan or full transfer, and despite a blight of injuries to central midfielders like Thiago Alcantara, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Javi Martinez as well as the departure of Toni Kroos, Hojbjerg has played just 259 minutes (per Transfermarkt.co.uk) in all competitions.

Martin Meissner/Associated Press

If he can't break into the first team now, what chance can he expect when his teammates are fit?

Hojbjerg's story is no anomaly at Bayern—they lost Emre Can to Leverkusen a year before. Former Germany under-17 coach Steffen Freund once described Can as "the most complete player [he'd] ever seen in [his] career," per German source Bild (h/t TheHardTackle), and the central midfielder revealed in May of 2013 that he found it hard to motivate himself while playing with Bayern's reserves. Speaking to Bild, he said he could not accept another season training with the first team and playing against small, local clubs in the German fourth tier.

Like Hojbjerg, Can found he'd reached his ceiling at Bayern and could no longer progress. And as the Dane may this winter, Can left Bayern in the summer of 2013.

After struggling in the mid-2000s, Bayern re-established themselves among Europe's most elite clubs by using a core of players promoted from their academy. But for each to emerge, there had to be a vacancy in the first team.

Philipp Lahm succeeded Bixente Lizarazu. David Alaba emerged to take Lizarazu's role on the left of defense, allowing Lahm to play on his favored right and serve as the long-awaited replacement for Willy Sagnol. Bastian Schweinsteiger's conversion from winger to holding midfielder created a vacancy in attacking midfield that Thomas Muller was able to fill.

In each of the aforementioned cases, a young and rising talent was given time and patience as he grew into superstardom.

Current Bayern youth players find themselves in an entirely different situation, with a lengthy list of fully developed, senior players ahead of them in the pecking order. Youngsters need playing time to develop into worthy starters, but for them to earn such playing time, they need to prove themselves as worthy starters.

It's a Catch-22 situation.

Having reached three Champions League finals in the last five seasons and now commanding revenues and wage bills that can only be described as astronomical, Bayern are a "mega-club" that cannot be patient with youngsters.

They need consistent, dominant results now—not in two or three years when their younger players start to show their class. It's entirely understandable that Bayern, like many other ultra-rich sides, would become too big to accommodate youngsters.

Bayern's situation is no different from that of other mega-clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid. Chelsea and Manchester City can join the list as well; despite their somewhat lesser international standing, youth have and will continue to have trouble finding their way into either side, even with an increased commitment to academy development.

Ever since the Galacticos era of the early 2000s, Real's mantra has been to buy ready-made big names. Talented academy players such as Alvaro Morata and Jose Callejon have been sold, powerless to assert themselves ahead of players like Isco and the now-departed Angel Di Maria, let alone nearly €300 million worth of Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and James Rodriguez.

Jese Rodriguez will predictably follow once he realizes he's reached his ceiling at the club and will never be more than a substitute.

The most interesting case study of the conflict between mega-club status and youth development is at Barcelona, home of the famous academy known as La Masia.

Whereas Real have never prided themselves as a club that promote local talent, Barcelona forged their recent success on academy development but have since strayed. Lionel Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Carles Puyol, Sergio Busquets, Gerard Pique and Pedro Rodriguez all graduated from La Masia and formed the core of the team that won a treble in Pep Guardiola's first season as a head coach.

In recent years, fans have waited expectantly for Thiago, Bojan Krkic, Cristian Tello and Isaac Cuenca, among others, to impose themselves in the first team. And with Puyol and Xavi in particular approaching the latter stages of their respective careers, there was reason to believe the youngsters could be phased in.

Barca reached a turning point in 2011, when Cesc Fabregas and Alexis Sanchez joined the club. Neither had an obvious and immediate full-time place in the first team, but Cesc stood in Thiago's way and Sanchez made it near-impossible for Tello or Cuenca to earn regular playing time. Since then, Barca have continued on a similar path, with Neymar and Luis Suarez in the last two summers drawing comparisons with Real's "Galacticos" policy.

The last academy player to truly become an international success at Barca was Pedro in 2009; since then, La Masia has been of little use to Barca in terms of talent production for the first team, despite loans to promote development. Marc Bartra is the exception, but his coming into the team can be attributed to the club's inability to sign a worthy successor to Puyol.

Barca are still an elite club, but they do not command the same respect as two or three years ago. Perhaps victims of their own success, there are serious concerns over their ability to break back into the top two or three teams in the world—it's been over three years since they reached the Champion League final.

They aren't quite at the same level as back in 2011, and in the Catalan giants, Bayern can see what their future might hold depending on how they plan their squad.

Classically, football has moved in cycles, with "golden generations" emerging almost at random. Clubs and national teams have more recently attempted to be more proactive about creating their success. Associations like Germany have introduced strict standards for youth development at all 1. and 2. Bundesliga clubs, and clubs like Barcelona have invested heavily as their core ages, attempting to prolong their success without having to wait for younger players to reach the world-class level.

Bayern now are where Barca were a few years ago, with Xabi Alonso, Arjen Robben, Franck Ribery, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm all the wrong side of 30 years old. There will, sooner or later, come a point when each will have to be phased out, lest they overstay their welcome and Bayern suffer a fate similar to Spain's at the 2014 World Cup.

The question is whether Bayern will attempt to buy to maintain their success or promote from within.

For now, Bayern seem to be going the route of Barca and aiming to have ready-made stars available to replace their aging veterans. It's a policy that certainly will not affect their domestic dominance but, with new players coming from a variety of footballing backgrounds—perhaps not having the same understanding as Lahm and Schweinsteiger, for example, had—the club's image and even its mid-term success at the very highest level could be affected.

On the other hand, waiting for another golden generation could take many years and would make for a more level playing field in the Bundesliga, where the academies at clubs like Schalke, Stuttgart, Wolfsburg, Dortmund and Leverkusen have consistently produced more Germany youth internationals than Bayern in recent years.

For now, Bayern are flying high domestically and are considered one of the world's very best clubs internationally.

Behind the scenes, though, there is the issue of long-term squad planning that has to be addressed and presents a bit of a quandary.

With no real weaknesses in their squad and even among the senior players on their bench, Bayern's ceiling for youth seems to be the Regionalliga. And so they now face the choice: phase out their aging stars by replacing them with internationally recognized names, or promote academy talents?

It seems they can only choose one, and following Can and Hojbjerg's statements, it seems that the plan is to buy their next generation.

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