Victor Orta on Leeds United's academy, Category One status and a two-pronged football philosophy

It might not be as pressing an objective as taking the Whites back to the Premier League promised land, but it remains an aim.

They took a step towards it with recently approved plans for a new base in the city.

The former home of Matthew Murray High School in south Leeds is where the Whites’ new training facility will be built, including an academy worthy of Category One status, an academy to match the Premier League status they hope to have earned by then.

Thorp Arch is the academy’s current home and has, in recent times, churned out a number of first-team players.

Kalvin Phillips, the subject of a £20m-plus bid from Aston Villa in the summer, is a graduate.

So too is Jamie Shackleton, another piece of Marcelo Bielsa’s midfield puzzle.

And Robbie Gotts, yet to make his first-team debut but already established as a squad member, came through the club’s youth system.

Winger Jack Clarke, currently back on loan from Spurs, Bournemouth’s Lewis Cook and Burnley’s Bailey Peacock-Farrell are among those to have left the club having enjoyed a Thorp Arch education in the game.

For all the talk of the future and the big plans being put in place, the academy commands respect according to Leeds United director of football Victor Orta.

“I respect a lot the the academy of this club,” he said on an episode of the Training Ground Guru podcast.

“If you watch the production of talent, it is amazing.

“I always support with investment, with recruitment, convince the board to still grow the academy.

“This club has history and I need to respect these kinds of things when I am working in a club.”

Orta says the powers that be at Elland Road have always had it in mind to upgrade the academy from Category Two, but it takes more than just finance to make it happen.

“Obviously we need to take this challenge like a responsibility,” he said.

“From the start when we arrived [we were thinking of Category One].

“The Category One is not about the money, it’s about structures but we are always working in this thinking.”

Supporters might link Orta’s role most closely to the recruitment of players for the first team, players who can carry the club’s promotion hopes and dreams.

But he sees the academy, the vision for its future and the support he can give it as one of his most significant duties.

“Trying to run the policy of football in the club, helping pull people in the same line,” he said when describing the director of football role he occupies.

“Obviously recruitment, sign this player or not this player, it is important but it is more important trying to choose the head coach, planning the academy, working with the head of the academy.

“I know the manager in the past was a very important figure in English football but we enrich the work of the head coaches and managers.

“It is our goal, daily.”

In Bielsa, Orta and Leeds have a head coach who is fully invested in the development of talent through the academy.

“Jack Clarke, Jamie Shackleton, Leif Davis,” said Orta.

“He likes developing the young players.

“The coachability he finds in young players is amazing for his ideas.”

Not all the players who pull on the white shirt and run out at Elland Road can be home-made.

Leeds United, like any other club hoping to one day operate at the very top level, must also bring in playing talent from elsewhere, whether from domestic or further-afield sources.

This summer the loan market was used, in Orta’s words, to improve on the squad that came close to promotion last season.

But a two-pronged approach to building a squad, both growing talent and going out and finding it, is something Orta hopes will remain a part of the club’s methodology going forward, even after he himself has left for pastures new.

“For me, one of the things I want to leave here is the club running this philosophy,” said the Spaniard.

“Perhaps we left and the person who arrives uses this idea about the academy and the best talent abroad.”