Our Inspiration
Being involved with academy football is brilliant, fun and rewarding. We want to help more children access and thrive in it.
It's no coincidence that we have the traditional pentagon panel football as our logo. We identified five key areas that we believe are vital to succeed once you are in the academy which are:
- The player and their welfare
- The importance of the familiy unit and the contribution it makes to the journey through the age groups
- The importance of education and the opportunities that stem from academy football
- Understanding academies, how they work whilst championing best practice and supporting coaches and managers
- Understanding how scouts work and how you can increase your chances of being scouted.
We don't have any plans to teach players football skills; that's the job of the academy. Each academy has their own football philosophy and we don't want to teach you something which is contrary to their needs.
Football skills requirements change. What your Dad or Mum thinks is the role of a player when they played may have changed as football strategies and tactics evolve. Their advice to you may not be current thinking but they've not done a bad job so far if you have just been scouted.
But what we will do is pass on our experiences and advice direct from academies to help your children progress in academy football whilst assisting parents and coaches make the most of the experience and help to preserve the family unit!
Supporting the Staff in Academies
Having seen academies operate, we noticed how passionate academy staff are about what they do. Some might describe it as a vocation because they work incredibly hard, often with lower compensation than senior team staff. And yet they offer tremendous value to football clubs producing players that cost a fraction of senior transferred players. Many of the transferred players fail to make a significant contribution to the senior team, effectively wasting £millions.
The academy system for many clubs is a 'Cinderella' operation, often starved of cash and resources because the majority of funding is diverted to the senior team, and it's understandable why this happens.
We believe there is a justifiable case to redress the balance and champion all that is good in the academy system and strive for investment and improvement.
What Will You Learn?
When you enter into the world of academy football you will receive a briefing from the club and it sets out what is expected of both the parents and the player. This is easily managable if you shift family life to focus purely on football. But the club will tell you not to do this because life isn't just about football. You shouldn't put all your eggs into one basket so to speak and that's where the difficulty lies because it's not easy to deliver all the other things you should be doing, ie to be a normal family outside of football. There isn't any guide that can tell you how to achieve this.
There may be things you read on here that you disagree with and that's OK with us. We want to hear about your different experience. But if 2/3 of parents and coaches say this is a good refelection of the academy expereince our advice to you should be beneficial.
