PURCHASE, N.Y. — Jack Harrison was just shy of his sixth birthday when professional scouts started calling. He was 7 when he began training with Manchester United. And he was 8 when he signed an agreement to play in the team’s youth academy.

In the working-class area of Bolton, England, where Harrison grew up, those would be regarded as thrilling early steps on a propitious path. But when Debbie Harrison, who was raising Jack on her own, watched her son bustling around the field with the other children, she saw things differently.

“There were 8s and 9s and 10s in the training area, 20-odd boys in each group, and I’m thinking, They’re only looking for one in this group, one to come through, and they’ll be happy,” she said. “It’s a factory system, isn’t it? They go into these academies, and they kind of become a number.”

The vast majority of boys who enter the top soccer academies in England never play for the clubs’ senior teams. Debbie Harrison was aware of this. She had heard too many stories of teenagers and young adults left rudderless after shouldering their parents’ dreams through childhood.