Newcastle make exciting addition from PSV in latest 'forward-thinking' move

Newcastle United have appointed PSV academy coach Jack Brazil as the club's new under-16s lead.

Brazil will start work at Newcastle next month after spending close to six years working with young players on the continent. The Englishman had spells as an assistant coach with PSV's under-17s and 18s and previously served as the elite head coach of Valerenga's under-14s and under-12s.

The well-travelled 30-year-old, who also has experience of coaching in the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar and Mongolia, will commence his new role at Newcastle on July 1 following the departure of Ian Bogie earlier this year.

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"Very excited and grateful for the opportunity to work at such a well-supported, forward-thinking club in a football crazy city," he wrote on LinkedIn.

Brazil joins the club at a time when real strides have been made at Little Benton under academy director Steve Harper. The academy have more staff than ever before; there is a progressive shared identity in the way teams play; the scouting set-up has been overhauled; and those working in the building have access to resources that simply 'did not exist' in the Ashley era.

The club now have an ever greater pull at youth team level and, most importantly, can point to a genuine pathway, as they did in convincing midfielder Alfie Harrison to leave Manchester City in January, after youngsters such as Lewis Miley and Elliot Anderson became mainstays in the first-team squad under Eddie Howe. However, there is still a sizable gap to bridge despite the huge wealth of Newcastle's owners.

The reality is that other category one academies, like Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool, have bigger budgets and these clubs have effectively had a head start so Newcastle need to be particularly smart. Brazil, though, thrived off a similar dynamic in the Netherlands as PSV's youth teams competed with Ajax, who had greater resources.

"As an education, I think you can look at the clubs in the Netherlands and you can go, 'It would be great to work for Ajax' and things like that," he previously told the mindset for sport podcast. "I disagree.

"We're the underdogs a little bit and being the one who is always fighting to try and prove themselves and succeed is really good fun. We always see ourselves as a little bit hard done by and we've got to work out how we're going to be successful and do better than the people that get more acclaim than us within the country.

"That's a really nice challenge. I really enjoy being part of that, having a big role in that challenge and working with it every day."