The FA, the Premier League and the Football League, the three bodies involved in the administration and delivery of youth development, have all pledged to improve existing practices over the last eighteen months. Zarif Rasul looks at the measures which could eventually turn England into world beaters.
LAST year, The Premier League, in consultation with the Football League and the FA, produced the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), a proposal designed to revamp the existing youth development system. It was ratified by all 20 Premier League shareholders at their AGM in June, and a final draft has been sent to the Football League for approval.
The Premier League says that the central aim of the EPPP is to “enable clubs to develop more and better home grown players in their Academies”. Under the proposal, clubs’ youth operations will be put into one of four categories. Those in the highest tier, category one, will have far fewer restrictions placed upon them in terms of the age at which a child can be trained and the amount of coaching time they can provide per week.
For clubs which run the top tier of Academy, rules regarding how far young players are permitted to travel (Academy/Centre players must live within 90 minutes’ drive of their club) will be inapplicable. Clubs will be expected to provide boarding school-style lodgings and team up with local schools in order to ensure those players’ educational needs are met. This will however, allow category one clubs to triple the existing amount of contact time they have with their players.
The cost of equipping a category one or category two training facility means that these groupings will be out of reach for a large proportion of Football League clubs. Unlike category one and two clubs, those operating in category three or four will not be able to access players until a later age. Category three clubs won’t be able to sign players until 11, whilst those in the category four will have to wait until a player is 16, effectively leaving them to sign players discarded by other clubs.
Manchester City have already announced plans to develop a brand new, state-of-the-art training facility. Undoubtedly aiming for category one status, the plans, which were unveiled last month, include 16 football pitches, on site accommodation for junior and senior players, a 7,000 capacity stadium for youth matches and an Academy designed to cater for 400 young players.
Football League Chairman Greg Clarke has expressed doubts over the EPPP, fearing that it may force several clubs to abandon youth development operations.
Jim Briden, Youth Development Business Manager at the Football League Trust, believes the Football League must guard against the disenfranchisement of smaller clubs.
“We have to try and ensure that the broad base of youth development that is often provided by a number of Football League clubs isn’t eroded. The fact that players who start out at fairly small Football League clubs often finish up at Premier League clubs demonstrates that those clubs have got a role to play in the programme,” he said.
The developmental makeup of the most recent England squad vindicates Briden’s assertion. Thirteen out of the 23 players called up for England’s squad to face the Netherlands earlier this month spent all or part of their formative footballing years at a club currently outside of the Premier League. Joe Hart, for example, emerged from League Two outfit Shrewsbury. Club team-mate Gareth Barry spent six years at Brighton before moving to Aston Villa as a trainee.