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.
The EPPP will also seek to address the controversial issue of compensation for young footballers. Fair compensation has long been a bone of contention amongst ‘selling’ clubs. Former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan infamously described the £700,000 fee set by the Football League tribunal for teenager John Bostock’s transfer to Tottenham in 2008 as “scandalous”.
Briden says that ensuring clubs are adequately compensated for the loss of young talent is essential if the EPPP is to receive the approval of the Football League’s shareholders.
“From our point of view, the EPPP clearly requires clubs to invest more money in their youth programmes. And yet, there is a proposal at the same time, to reduce the amount of compensation that they might be able to achieve for those players that they’re developing. And that seems a bit of a dichotomy to me and to Football League clubs.
“They’re being asked to invest more and yet the assets that they’re investing in, the players, could move for less money. Until the compensation levels are deemed to be reasonable and appropriate, I think it will be difficult for Football League clubs to adopt the EPPP.”
Once all parties are in agreement, the implementation of the EPPP could happen as early as 2012. With UEFA’s financial fair play regulations to take effect from 2013, having a healthy and productive Academy will be even more important for elite Premier League clubs.
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Football League clubs recently reiterated their commitment to improving youth development, by agreeing to increase expenditure on young players and the minimum number of ‘home-grown’ players required in matchday squads. The 72 clubs agreed to introduce a one-percent levy on all transfer spending, with the anticipated extra £600,000 per season to be invested in Youth Development programmes. Teams must now name a minimum of six domestically-registered players in their squads.
The FA is also doing its part to improve programmes and coaching for young footballers. Mini-Soccer was first introduced for children under 10 years of age in September 1999, and now proposals have been put forward to extend small-sided formats to under-11s and under-12s.
“It’s because you go from six years old to ten years old playing 7v7 on smaller 60 by 40 pitches,” says Middlesex FA County Development Manager Stuart Allen.
“Overnight you go from playing 7v7 to playing 11v11 on a full-sized pitch, but overnight you don’t actually grow twice your size. You don’t become twice as fast or twice as physical. You end up having a ten-year-old kid standing in a goal, trying to defend the same size goal that Petr Cech has to defend.”
Nick Levett, the FA’s National Development Manager for Youth Football, has spent time over the last two years working on a review of youth development in England. He recommended the switch to smaller-sided games for 11-and 12-year-olds and explains why it is needed if young footballers are to develop better technical skills.
“With a big pitch and small players the game becomes a territory-based activity where the teams are encouraged to shift the ball as far away from their goal as quick as possible whilst moving it towards the opposition goal,” he said.
“This ends up being a game that does not encourage our children to ‘play through the thirds’ and work the ball up the pitch, rather get the ball from one end to the other in the shortest amount of time. Teams find they can become successful and score goals by having a player with a large kick in defence and a fast player in attack.”
The governing body has also introduced a range of new age-appropriate coaching courses, designed to help coaches to understand the needs of players. The FA Youth Award was launched 18 months ago, and is split into three modules. Module one was launched last year, and the second module debuted this summer.
English football finds a home
The long-awaited National Football Centre is set to open in Burton-upon-Trent next summer, 30 years after the idea was first mooted. Whilst it might be far-fetched to suggest that St George’s Park (SGP) will lead to an immediate upturn in England’s fortunes, the FA believes that it will help to create a centralised footballing philosophy in this country.
Howard Wilkinson was Technical Director at the FA when the freehold for the 330-acre site was acquired in 2001. He explains why it has taken a further ten years for plans to come to fruition.
“Money! When I first got it passed in the early part of the 21st century it had the full backing of the FA, and then Wembley was allowed to explode at Monty Python-esque proportions. There was not at times a great political will to see it finished, because there were people that didn’t understand the concept,” he said.
“I’d like it to be the Oxford and Cambridge of education in football. It’s the place where cultures will be trained, and cultures for specific jobs will be trained. It’s a place for research, a place for development; it’s a place where you bring the top minds in sport together. It’s a place that services the football industry in this country at all levels – boys, girls, men, women and all the associate disciplines to do with the development of football.”
In addition to providing a high-quality base for all of England’s teams, the FA hopes that SGP will raise coaching standards and the importance of the profession as a whole.
The number of UEFA-qualified coaches (at Pro, A and B level) in England is substantially lower than numbers in France, Spain, Italy and Germany; England has less than 10% of the average number of UEFA ‘B’ coaches in these countries, 16% of UEFA ‘A’ coaches and 12% of UEFA ‘Pro’ coaches.
SGP intends to boost these statistics by aiming to train 250,000 new coaches by 2018, offering a wider range of qualifications and introducing a raft of age-appropriate coach education courses.
Fact box – Facilities:
Eleven full-size pitches, accommodating 11-a-side and 7-a-side football
One full-sized indoor pitch and running track
Multisport indoors sports hall
Hydrotherapy suite
Strength and conditioning gyms
Biomechanics and screening area
Read my investigation into the current youth development system here.
Follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/zarifrasul
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