Wonderkid Factory | Part 3 | AZ Academy Stars Excel

AZ Alkmaar made a promising start to life under Robinho Lazaró, who’d been impressed with his side’s efforts to finish 4th in Eredivisie in 2023/24. However, these early seasons don’t really matter too much in our bid to become national and European champions with a team of academy products.

More important was Lazaró’s first youth intake, which produced midfielder Wessel van Dord, who was already good enough for the first team, and several more exciting prospects. That gave Lazaró the confidence to continue selling off non-homegrown players, sanctioning a club record £22.5m sale of Yukinari Sugawara to Porto before selling captain Jordy Clasie to Wolves for £3m, striker Jens Odgaard to Las Palmas for £7.5m and left back David Møller Wolfe to Burnley for £2.6m.

In their place, Lazaró promoted homegrown prospects centre back Enoch Mastoras, full backs Sem Dekkers and Elijah Dijkstra, midfielder Zico Buurmeester, winger Jasper Hartog, strikers Yoël van den Ban and Mexx Meerdink and goalkeepers Sem Westerveld and Steve Herrera. That saw the AZ bank balance boosted to £86m and the squad’s average age reduced to just 20. And Lazaró stuck with the 4-3-3 approach he implemented last season.

2nd Season With The Cheese Farmers

Lazaró’s second season also began with some European qualifiers, this time in the Europa League. They got a potentially tricky start against Genk but Lewis Schouten’s goal edged a 1-0 home win and striker Myron van Brederode and winger Mayckel Lahdo earned a 2-1 away win. And they eased past St Mirren 3-0 on aggregate to reach the league phase.

The league began with a 0-0 at Rangers before defeating Dinamo Zagreb 3-0, Trnava 2-0, then-leaders Nice 1-0 away and Shakhtar 1-0 at home to set a new Europa League record of 7 successive clean sheets before a 1-0 loss at Besiktas. But another 1-0 loss at home to Wolfsburg saw AZ finish 9th and miss out on the automatic places despite only conceding 2 goals! AZ then cruised past Union SG 5-1 in the playoff round, led by a Jayden Addai brace in the 2nd leg, before an exciting 6-5 victory over Rennes before the run ended with a 3-2 defeat to Nice courtesy of a 2-0 loss in France.

AZ weren’t fancied to challenge the big 3 with the bookies giving them 20/1 title odds behind Ajax, Feyeenoord and PSV at 5/4, 11/4 and 4/1.

They kicked on from that as Hartog scored his first senior goal in a 4-1 thumping of NEC Nijmegen. And an easier run of games saw AZ challenge the leaders, only losing at Sparta Rotterdam in 20 games between mid-August and a 1-0 loss at leaders Ajax in early February. That was largely led by van Brederode who, stepping up as the main striker, matched his goal tally of 9 last season with a brace in a 4-0 win over De Graafschap in late November. That streak also included a 1-0 win at home to Feyenoord in which Rome-Jayden Owusu-Oduro stole the show with 10 saves.

A 2-2 at home to PSV in mid-February kept AZ in 3rd place, 4 points clear of the Eindhoven side. And more good form followed, including a van Brederode hat trick inspiring a 5-0 thumping of Go Ahead Eagles and a rotated side winning 2-0 at PEC Zwolle with Hartog assisting van den Ban and promising full back Saviola Simons. Lazaró also finished the season with a team of fully homegrown players as they drew 0-0 at Utrecht.

And that saw AZ far surpass last season’s points tally, finishing 2nd to Ajax on 79 points. They scored 74 goals and had the league’s best defence, only conceding 21 times all season. van Brederode was the 2nd-top scorer in Eredivisie, with his 20 goals bettered by Feyenoord’s Giménez scoring 20, and got a league-high 9 player of the match awards. While Schouten got the 2nd-most assists with his 10 only bettered by Ajax’s Mannsverk’s 16.

AZ Academy Products Update

van Brederode led the way with 26 goals in 42 games followed by van Bommel and Lahdo (13), Addai (11) and Schouten (6). Schouten was the leading creative force with 12 assists followed by Lahdo (10), Mees de Wit and van Brederode (9), Addai and Beljic (7).

AZ’s academy products played a much more prominent role in the first team this season. They played a combined 288 league games and 160 cup appearances, scoring 46 league goals and 15 cup goals, plus 34 assists and 12 cup assists. Here’s how the academy stars fared in the first team:

Jong AZ didn’t perform quite as well this season, finishing 15th in Keuken Kampioen Divisie, while the under 18s finished 3rd in their league. Here’s how some of the better performers got on:

A good sign of the academy’s success was AZ now leading the Eredivisie development list, with 33 players now plying their trade in the Dutch top tier – 18 of which were still at the club. While a proud moment saw van Brederode become the first of these prospects to make his Netherlands debut in June.

That player development delivered again with another strong youth intake containing two 5-star potential talents, one 4.5-star potential and two 4-star potential. The star player of the intake is striker Raily Wau, who’s potentially even more exciting than last year’s star man van Dord and scored twice on his full debut in a 3-0 win at home to Sparta, along with centre back Franciscus Legros, who suffered a cruciate ligament injury in early May, and attacking midfielder Manuel Piqué.

Lazaró was delighted with the progress AZ had made this season. The results didn’t matter too much yet, but he was more pleased with how many academy products were making their mark in the first team. At least six were already first choice starters and, while it would probably still be some time before they could become fully homegrown, the first two youth intakes offered plenty of positivity.

Could they kick on in season three and potentially even challenge for trophies? Join us next Monday to find out!