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Ian McClurg ,

December 19, 2014 Email

Ian McClurg



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The grand opening of the new 200 million pound academy by Manchester City has re-ignited the discussions if investments made by top clubs like Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Everton in their academies will result in more young players at these clubs graduating to the first team.



The financial fair play regulation has forced high-spending clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea to place increased focus on developing their own players. Youth players at Manchester City will now be trained in state of the art facilities which will include the latest sports science advances – such as altitude training. There is no doubting that professional football is still playing catch-up in terms of sports science but debate is now focusing on whether today’s academy generation coming through are too “pampered”



Sean Dyche, the Burnley manager, recently argued that academy players in England today are given too much, too young and are too soft. He pointed to young players aged 14 requiring rub-down’s before training and an 8 year old complaining about a hamstring injury. Gary Neville has also recently questioned how England should best prepare young academy players to successfully graduate to the first team. Neville argues that he benefited from being around the first team at an early age and laying out the kit in the changing rooms before first team games. He also pointed to the fact that at Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson and his assistant manager Archie Knox frequently trained young players at the club from U12-U16.



Gary Neville believes that technical skills are a given when you reach 16-18 years old at a top club. He strongly feels that his academy learning at Manchester United was successful because he understood from an early age, by being around the first team environment and their staff, what was required to play at that level. Manchester United has subsequently, like many academies in England, separated their academy from the first team activities.



Manchester City has embraced this model at their new facility. Patrick Vieira, Head of the Elite Development Squad at Manchester City believes that the thinking is to have the young academy be close enough to the first team to “see it, smell it and they can see they need it”. Vieira does not agree that young Manchester City players will be too pampered. The message he wants to portray is that “you can achieve to anyone who is talented enough to be there”. Two of Vieira’s young players were involved in first team action when Manchester City beat Sunderland 4-1 this season and his U19 group of players have topped the UEFA junior league and beat Bayern Munich along the way.



No doubt the debates will continue within English football on whether the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) will result in a greater number of players being capable of playing in the English Premiership. The Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) is the youth development scheme initiated and implemented by the Premier League in recent years. The intention of the EPPP is to improve the quality and quantity of home grown players produced by top English clubs.



According to Sky Sports last year, the pool of English players in the Premier League has dropped by 16% since the 1998/99 season and is now at about 32%. It will be several years before statistics can properly evaluate how successful EPPP is at improving the quality of the young players being produced at England’s academies. There is no doubt that technical skills are being developed and the young players have access to the latest in sports science and sports psychology. However, as Dyche and Neville point out, are the academies doing the right things to adequately prepare these young players for the very competitive world of first team professional football in arguably Europe’s toughest league?



Many clubs have for many years loaned their best young players out to professional teams in the lower leagues in order to gain valuable first team experience playing against other professional players. Lately, there has been some debate about England following the same model that exists in Spain where top clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid run reserve teams in the Spanish third division.



Neville is still of the opinion that academies are not about buildings, but about people and behavior. I would agree with that. If the key question is whether to integrate academies with the first team, rather that segregate, then I would argue the former. Crewe Alexandra’s academy has long been considered as one of English top football academies and generated more than 20 million pounds in transfer fees from players such as David Platt (former Aston Villa/England), Nick Powell (Former Manchester United), Dean Ashton (former West Ham/England) and Danny Murphy (Former Liverpool/England). One of the reasons, I believe, that the club’s academy was so successful was that the club’s long-serving manager Dario Gradi also coached at the academy level. I was quite surprised when I came across this when visiting and observing their academy model several years ago. However, I do see its benefits. There was a distinctive coaching philosophy that was religiously followed throughout the academy and all the way up into the first team. In the academy their young players quickly learnt, like Neville argues, what the requirements were at the club to play for the first team.



More recently, I have spent time at the Wolves academy. For the past few years, their academy and first team have shared academy facilities and I think that has benefited the club. Last season, 50 % of the first team that earned promotion to the Championship graduated through the academy. Kevin Thelwell, Head of football development has articulated the clubs vision for the future as “we have one football department and everyone works together. By having this one-club approach, this ‘Wolves way’, I think it allows us to achieve much more than many other clubs.”



Last month, Wolves opened their new 7 million pound academy facility at Compton Park. The first team and the academy will now be operating out of different buildings. There will be less opportunity for the young academy players to mix with the first team but maybe, like Neville argues, it is more about the culture of the club and the integration, rather than buildings. Kenny Jackett, first team Head Coach has given many young academy players their debuts in the last two seasons and is looking to add more academy graduates to the first team so Wolves will retain their same “integrated approach” to their football operations between the academy and the first team.



And what about the other clubs? Gary Neville, in his article in the Daily Telegraph posed some critical questions. “If you went to all 20 Premier League managers, I wonder how many are 1) Concerned about the youth team 2) In daily contact with their youth team coach 3) Know the in’s and out’s of the youth team players from 14 up?



How these questions are answered may well ultimately determine the success of EPPP! Ian McClurg is technical director of 1 v 1 FC, a soccer training academy based in Ancaster Ontario and author of the upcoming book, The 1v1Way: Soccer Tips from an Emerging Talent Centre. For more info, contact Ian at ian@1v1soccer.ca or visit www.1v1soccerfc.com

