The journey for a young player to establish themselves as first-team player is both a long and gruelling task and one that very few succeed at in the early parts of the career.
For every Kylian Mbappe making a name for themselves and being the star of the show at the age of 18 there are thousands of youngsters with the potential to go far but not given the platform needed to neuter their talent and grow as a player, and then there’s Jack Clarke, who is stuck in the middle of this spectrum.
The Tottenham winger came into the spotlight last season for Leeds when the attacker found himself playing regularly for Marcelo Bielsa’s swashbuckling side, largely coming off the bench and proving to make a solid impact in the final few minutes of the game, and the teenager impressed.
Spurs snapped the 18-year-old up for a reported fee of £10m according to BBC Sport and subsequently loaned Clarke back out to his boyhood club for the 2019/20 season, with the aim of the winger continuing his development and becoming a first-team regular for Leeds, but so far, that has not been the case.
As numbers from Transfermarkt show, Clarke has played just 70 minutes of first-team football this season and due to EFL regulations on the number of loan players a club can have in an 18-man squad, the winger has found himself out of the matchday team entirely.
Indeed, the impact of Eddie Nketiah and Helder Costa, as well as returning loanee Jack Harrison, has given Bielsa a good reason to omit Clarke from the squad, but from Tottenham’s point of view, this will not be acceptable.
With Football Insider reporting that Spurs have a recall clause in Clarke’s deal, it would seemingly make sense for the Premier League side to activate this in January if the 18-year-old is yet to break it into the first-team, ending the teenager’s long affiliation with Leeds, the club he came through at.
It could be seen as a harsh move from Spurs, but at the end of the day, they want to see their best young players go out on loan and play rather than sitting on the bench, something Clarke is getting used to this season.