Football Academies Explained
Football Academies Explained
It was remodelled with a more distributed system of academies set up locally around England, thereby enabling many more players to be brought into an official training programme.
The Premier League part funds all the academies in exchange for lower transfer fees which are designed to compensate the club for the cost of training the player.
The minimal transfer fees are set out in the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP)
but may exceed the minimal value for the right player.
The effect of this has been to capture many more
players in the system than is truly required
but the best players still need team mates to train and play with.
Whilst no one has a crystal ball and can accurately predict the outcome for players, evidently many players are there to make up the numbers. That is not necessarily bad as the overall academy experience is very positive for players.
Outside of the Premier League the lower leagues have, through academies, transformed the standard of football played.
Where once the local butcher and teacher donned a pair of boots on a part-time basis, academy players are now able to go on to potentially earn a living playing football and, in the case of a cup run, create upsets where complacent Premier League teams are made to look decidedly average.
Another positive in my experience is players mature faster, became great team players in the wider sense of the word and develop strong social skills as a result of being treated as young adults.
People say football is a game of opinions and the future of players can rely purely on the whim of a manager. That might have been true up until 2015ish. But now football is increasingly viewed through the prism of maths, analytics and IT.
Professional clubs now have the ability to sense, measure and analyse every aspect of individual players and team performances which means it’s becoming far less opinion-based and more quantitive and science-based.
Staying In Touch With Reality
Congratulations if you have just turned up with your child for the first training session. It’s a great feeling. Celebrate and enjoy it.
But if you think your child is on course to be a professional player nothing could be further from the truth. You are now in a system with over 12,000 other children in it, all looking for a place in a professional football club. If you count the players that make the U9s starting team all the way through to U14s, the majority of players will have left the original team by the end of the under 14 season, perhaps earlier.
During that time, 20 or more players could pass through the team. So when you extrapolate that across the academy system about 20,000-36,000 children might pass through the academy system during that time.
With 250 or so teams in the various UK football leagues there are currently 6,000 players on the payroll. The percentage of academy players that make it to a professional standard is in the region of less than 1%.
If you were being pejorative you might describe this as factory and a business in its own right.
....A place where the operational costs of running the academy can be offset by other clubs willing to buy some of the finished articles that don’t make it into their first team.
Types of Academy
Academies are categorised in to four types. Catagory 1s (Cat 1) are the top.
They tend to be Premier League clubs or those that have been in the past.
They receive funding measured in millions. They have many coaches specialising in playing positions. They also have first class facilities in terms of dedicated indoor and outdoor pitches, as well as onsite classroom training for theory and education carried out by sports and data experts.
Cat 1 and Cat 2 clubs are processing hundreds of boys in a single age group. Cat 1 clubs will have development centres around the country and the world selecting children, training them, and each year eliminating dozens/hundreds of children from the development / academy programme.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Cat 3 and 4s academies. Expect to see them using shared community facilities, have fewer coaches but partnerships with schools, universities and other third parties as they work collaboratively together to deliver a football learning environment.
You will see fewer children which means less competition, and another positive is you and your child might develop a working relationship with the staff and club.
This is not always the case with Cat 1 clubs where parents sometimes complain about the very direct, impersonal forms of communication and aloof staff.
One of the first things you notice and must embrace is the governance of the academy and the environment you are now in.
- You are now in a learning environment first and foremost.
Please take that on board.
When you’re in the academy, it’s all about learning football in a safe environment.
- Safe to think, try, learn and make mistakes without parents screaming opinions and coaching advice from the side-lines.
Training and Matches aren’t Always About Winning and Scoring Goals.
There are some parents that can't make that adjustment. They see themselves as an expert football pundit with knowledge far greater than the coaching staff.
These parents still think they have the right to tell their child what to do on the pitch during training and matches. And, because they don’t know what instructions have been communicated to the children by the coach, they may in fact be telling them the opposite of the coach’s instructions.
I hold my hand up and say I made that mistake. I did it once but never again.
There is nothing to stop you expressing your opinion with other parents. We all did and will continue to do so, but just be mindful the coach may have told the team that, "in this match I want the team to channel the ball down the centre or sit deep," etc.
If you can’t adjust to this behavioural choice, you will start to stand out from other parents who embrace the change. Not only will you harm your child’s chances of progression, but you will look and sound incredibly stupid compared to the other parents.
You must leave football terrace instincts and behaviour behind. Your
football opinions really don’t matter.
The worst case of this behaviour I witnessed took place at a Cat 1 Premier League club in the south of England. A father was stood behind the goal coaching his goal keeping son. The foulest language emerged from the father chastising his son’s performance.
As parents from the opposition side, we were embarrassed for the child. The father was nothing more than a bully. One parent from our team, rightly complained to the host club and, shortly afterwards we heard the club were grateful we made the complaint as it gave them the opportunity to enforce their own policy and an apology was issued by that club to our club and parents.
At the same match we heard another parent of the same side pulling their child to one side and telling their son, "if they don't pass it to you, ignore them and do it all by yourself,"
Football Academy Governance
The Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) was conceived by the Premier League and adopted by the English Football League and sets out a methodology for clubs to manage their academy environments.
The EPPP works across three phases: Foundation (Under-9 to Under-11), Youth Development (U12 to U16) and Professional Development (U17 to U23). It covers everything from how Scouts conduct themselves, official administration, spending levels, transfer fees, training, travel time limits and, most importantly the safety and welfare of your child. This includes the processes to engage the club and the football authorities if you have any concerns about the welfare and safety of your child. Full details can be found here. It’s updated and republished every year.
It's is also available from the English Football League website.
