What is the secret to Wallsend Boys producing so many top-level football players?

N ot many local football clubs can claim to have produced the most expensive British footballer of the day. Wallsend Boys, a grassroots team in working-class north Tyneside are about to do it for a second time. With Elliot Anderson on the brink of a deal with Manchester City worth £116m, eclipsing the fee paid by Real Madrid for Gareth Bale in 2013, another chapter in the history of the club is about to be written. It is one that will be familiar to club members old enough to remember Alan Shearer’s record breaking £15m move to Newcastle in 1996. And it’s not just expensive talent that Wallsend churns out. As well as producing record breakers, the club can also claim several England internationals who have come through their ranks such as Michael Carrick, Peter Beardsley and Fraser Forster. It raises the question of whether there’s something in the water in the town, whose population numbers just 45,000, or it is the way Wallsend rears its young that makes the club such a crucible for footballing prowess. Geography certainly has no small part to play in it. The north-east is second only to Greater London as the county to supply players for Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup squad, with four of the squad raised in Tyne & Wear. But Alan Thompson, another of the club’s graduates whose professional career included stints at Newcastle, Leeds, Aston Villa and Celtic, said it is people as much as place that makes Wallsend so special. …