In March 2013 a young man killed himself after suffering years of mental health difficulties following his release by a Premier League football club’s academy at the age of 16. The summing up by the coroner who presided over the inquest into his death could hardly have been a stronger or more salutary warning about the potential dangers of English football’s youth development system.

Relentlessly ambitious and commercialised professional clubs recruit thousands of boys into intensive, four‑times‑a‑week training from the age of eight, in numbers still broadly based on those first sanctioned by the Football Association’s “Charter for Quality” 20 years ago this month. Hundreds of these boys are released each year, as the clubs narrow their focus on who might have a faint chance of making a career in professional football and becoming a valuable financial asset. Despite the huge numbers housed in this system, currently 12,000 boys, the chinks of first-team opportunities have diminished every year since 1997. In each transfer window, most Premier League clubs overlook their young graduates and instead spend multimillions of pounds on fully formed overseas stars.

The inquest was told that the young man had been “a happy and bright and fun child who was a talented footballer”. The Guardian has agreed not to name him following a request from his family to spare them further distress.

He was spotted playing junior football, brought into the academy of a lower-division club, then picked up by the Premier League club, who had him in their system for three years from the age of 13. At 16, when the cut is made for who will be asked to join the scholarship programme, in which boys leave school and have a full‑time, two-year association with the clubs, the young man was released.

“I find that it was … that pivotal point that crushed a young boy, a young man’s life and all the dreams that go with it,” the coroner said. “It is the one, I find, the single most important factor that led to the events which ended [in his suicide].”

She continued: “I think it’s very difficult to build up hopes of a young man and for them to be dashed at a critical age, when a boy becomes a man. To be found wanting in every way, it’s very cruel …

“I am not here to pronounce on football clubs that make the arrangements about … young footballers and giving them hopes, because they are not here to explain it. But it feels to be let go, and from all the evidence that I have heard today there’s not much [support]; to have no support for that letting go seems to be adding cruelty upon cruelty. And that lack of support, I find in absentia of the football clubs … to be a certain and compelling factor in what happened ultimately … and I find [the young man] was a statistic of that.”

Really, there are hundreds of boys across the country, being set up to fail

The Premier League and Football League adamantly defend the professionalism of their youth processes, coaching and facilities, which have undoubtedly improved since the introduction in 2012 of the Elite Player Performance Plan. Both leagues stress that boys who are taken on for the 16-18 scholarship must continue with education – commonly this is a BTEC sports diploma – and receive a broad range of welfare provision and courses in life skills including emotional wellbeing. The EFL says it is “supportive of the holistic development of young players”, and the Premier League aims “to support the development of well-rounded young players”.

The EFL says that its League Football Education department, which delivers the welfare programmes, tracks what happens to players for four years after they have been released; the Premier League says its clubs keep in touch. All the outcomes they cite for these young men are positive.

Fifteen Premier League and nine Championship clubs have Category One EPPP academies and operate under-23 teams, so they report a relatively high number of 18-year-olds given initial professional contracts – 65% last year, according to the Premier League. But Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, says that of the boys who make it into the elite scholarship programme at 16, past PFA research has found that five out of six are not playing professional football at 21. Taylor describes this as “a matter of major concern”. The leagues report that many who are released find their level in non-league football, some go to university or secure scholarships in US colleges, and the LFE says it has examples of former apprentice footballers working as solicitors, accountants, cardiothoracic physiotherapists and radio producers.

The provision is less sophisticated and holistic for boys who may have been in the academy system for years from infancy, their family lives dominated by travelling long distances to train during the week and play a match at weekends, only to be released at 16 or younger. The starkly unequal nature of British society and its national game means that these boys drop from multimillion-pound, plush youth development complexes back into the generally scrappy environs of the underfunded grassroots.

Although the Football Association has set up its inquiry headed by Clive Sheldon QC into the sexual abuse now known to have blighted youth football in the past, there appears to be no thorough assessment of the mental and emotional impacts on young men dealt by the current industrialised academy system.

The few academic studies based on limited access to clubs and young players have all produced serious concerns. Dr David Blakelock of Teesside University found in 2015 that 55% of players in his study were suffering “clinical levels of psychological distress” 21 days after being released. Himself previously a youth footballer with Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest, Blakelock says the academy experience can narrow young boys’ perspectives into an “athletic identity”, in which they see themselves almost wholly as footballers, so they can suffer “a loss of self-worth and confidence” when that is taken away.

Eddie Oshodi, in action here for Rushden & Diamonds in in 2011, was in Watford’s academy. ‘As a youngster you are fed a dream, you know very little else,’ he says. Photograph: Pete Norton/Getty Images

Chris Platts, whose 2012 doctorate for Chester University was based on questionnaires and interviews with 303 17- and 18‑year‑olds in 21 clubs’ academies, says only four have professional contracts now – a drop-out rate of 99%. Platts stresses that there are many well-intentioned, hardworking coaches and welfare officers, and regards the EPPP as a well-considered system, although he cautions that there is a quality gap between the Premier League and clubs lower down. His overriding concerns were that education was not taken seriously enough by many of the young men who believed they were within sight of being footballers, that despite the welfare programmes the academies were a high-pressure, “unreal” environment, and there was not enough support for players released.

“The clubs have got huge resources and have children from young ages,” Platts says. “For those who leave, the whole process of the academy has had a huge impact on them as a human being, emotionally, psychologically and on their social development. When they are released, they are suddenly rushed into the normal world, and many struggle to cope with it.”

In 2014 Alex Stephens, a former academy footballer from Willesden, north London, died aged 21 in an accident while on holiday with friends in Barcelona. His mother, Faye Stephens, says she felt Alex had at that time just “started to find happiness again” after being “a bit lost” following his release by Norwich City at 18, having endured some struggles in Watford’s academy from the age of 10.

She says she appreciated the great benefits which serious football involvement gave her son, but that he suffered under the constant scrutiny of his performance and conduct. He developed anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, which she believes was exacerbated by the pressurised academy environment, and was unhappy away from home at Norwich from 16 to 18. After Norwich released him he went for trials, sustained an injury, then struggled for direction, his mother recalls, before starting a plumbing course, widening his circle of friends, and working towards becoming a DJ.

When they are released, they are suddenly rushed into the normal world, and many struggle to cope with it

“He was just finding himself then,” she says. After Alex died she and his close friend, Eddie Oshodi, who had been with him in Watford’s academy, set up a foundation with the intention of helping boys’ mental health.

“My husband and I aren’t football people; we didn’t know too much about the system,” Faye Stephens says. “Now I think they sign children much too young; they are building boys up to think they’re going to be footballers, giving them false hope, then all of a sudden it’s taken away. I would say boys should wait until 14, at least. Alex loved playing football – for fun, and at a young age they should be playing for fun.”

Oshodi, a defender, who left Watford at 19 having made one first-team league appearance as a substitute, then played four seasons at Forest Green Rovers, says that looking back, the academy boys were “in a bubble”, and the wider education provision was limited.

“As a youngster you are fed a dream, you know very little else,” he says. “That is all you aspire to: football, football, football. You see the glitz and glamour; 24-year-old players turning up in a new Range Rover or Ferrari, everybody doing everything for you, and you think that’s life, that’s reality.”

Oshodi himself was academic as a teenager, but says he did nine rather than 11 GCSEs because training took up a chunk of school time, then studied for the BTEC rather than A levels. The EFL accepts that many clubs struggle to timetable A levels given the amount of training the 16-18-year-olds do, and that only “a small number” take A-levels.

Oshodi believes that clubs did not provide enough preparation or support for release: “Being in an academy from such a young age cuts down on normal socialising,” he says. “Football is the centre of everything, and when people are released, they can doubt who they are.”

Huddersfield Town have scrapped their academy in the 8-16 year groups. They found that of all the boys who had come through their system, not one had played in the Premier League since Jon Stead, who graduated in 1999. Photograph: Reuters

He now plays semi-professional football for Wealdstone in the National League South, and is taking a psychology degree at Birkbeck College. He says he advises young players not to sign for an academy until they are 16, to avoid having their social experience and development narrowed. “It becomes like a job from the age of 10,” he says. “It completely dominates your growing up. Some people fall out of love with the game.”

Gordon Taylor points, like many working in the system, to boys who have benefited from the experience of playing high‑quality football in academies and secured US scholarships or university places after being released. But he acknowledges that although the PFA and clubs have some provision to prepare and help the 500-600 boys who are released every year, he sees some for whom “it’s as though their lives have come to an end”.

The PFA sees “the extreme end” of this distress; part of the union’s offer is a 24-hour telephone helpline. This is a recognition of the severe consequences built into England’s and Wales’s modern football system, for fit and healthy young men who have been the best footballers of their generation. “It’s the game’s biggest issue,” Taylor says.

The Premier League and Football League adamantly defend the professionalism of their youth processes

The Premier League’s advocacy of the EPPP system was fundamentally challenged last month by one of its own clubs, newly promoted Huddersfield Town, who announced the blunt conclusion of an extensive review by scrapping the academy altogether in the 8-16 age groups. Parents of 100 boys were called to a meeting with the chief executive, Julian Winter, and told that their association with the club was to end in a month. Half the academy’s 25 permanent staff are to be laid off, along with part-time people working evening and weekends. Huddersfield had found that of all the boys who had come through their system, not one had played in the Premier League since Jon Stead, who graduated in 1999. That is 18 years of boys being taken out of local and school football from the age of eight, the overwhelming majority not securing a career.

Huddersfield’s landmark Premier League promotion was secured after hiring a German manager, David Wagner, and by signing a clutch of German players. The club’s academy, which has produced several players now at lower-division clubs, was regarded as a model, and ranked as the EFL’s 12th most “productive” of its 72 clubs last season.

Oshodi says that in his experience of the many young men he has seen released, he saw a broad class divide in the consequences. Better-off, middle-class parents had absorbed more clearly the bleak chance of their sons attaining a professional football career, had emphasised the importance of continuing education throughout and could draw on more resources to support their boys into alternative options. Many whom Oshodi knows from less advantaged backgrounds struggled to negotiate the system with that perspective, he says. Many, having spent years in the academies, have hard landings back into their disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and fall into crime and drug dealing.

Gordon Taylor says that of the boys who make it into the elite scholarship programme at 16, past PFA research has found that five out of six are not playing professional football at 21. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA

That view is supported by Geoff Scott, chief executive of the welfare organisation for former footballers, XPRO, who reports a high casualty rate for boys “tossed aside” by academies. “The boys are released and that is the last many ever hear from the club they may have been with for years,” says Scott. “That is the cold, harsh reality of it.”

In recent years Scott has visited 108 young former footballers in prison, he says, most convicted of intent to supply class A drugs. One of the most notorious tragic cases was the death in 2009 of Reece Staples, 19, just months after he was released by Nottingham Forest following years in the club’s academy. He was trying, as many do, to get back into football but had not found another club when in May 2009 he became involved in amateurish drug dealing, swallowing 19 packets of cocaine in Costa Rica and flying back to the UK. One burst in his stomach, and the young man died on the floor of a police cell, in dreadful circumstances. The Independent Police Complaints Commission later upheld his mother Clair Dunne’s complaints that Nottinghamshire police officers failed to provide her son with the appropriate level of care.

Chris Green, whose 2009 book Every Boy’s Dream chronicled the institutionalised disappointment delivered to so many boys taken into academies so young, believes that the FA inquiry by Sheldon should look at the emotional and psychological impact of the youth development system now.

“It is very complacent to imagine that all the abuse was in the past and now we have a perfect system,” says Green. “There are different forms of abuse. These are children, very young, they are not being given the time to play and enjoy their sport, before being taken into a system where they are seen as commodities, then discarded with too little concern about the damage it does.”

Green’s book has been followed this year by Michael Calvin’s No Hunger in Paradise, an alarming critique of the system, in which Calvin describes boys released by academies, still trying to catch the eye and clamber back in, as “ghosts in the machine”.

Another of Alex Stephens’s friends in the Watford academy, Aaron Morgan, recalls that he too fell into the fringes of criminality after being released by Queens Park Rangers at 18. He recalls that he found the expected disciplines and routines difficult at Watford and QPR, as a teenager from Shepherd’s Bush with only his mother as his rock of support.

“As a young footballer, everybody is selling the same dream to you: if you work hard, you will make it. But that just isn’t the case,” he says. “You realise now that a lot of boys are kept there just to make up the numbers. Then for it to be taken away in one second, mentally, that was a lot to deal with, especially for somebody with no father figure. I went through a stage of depression, back home, not wanting to leave the house, and I know loads of people in the same position, struggling. Every year there is a new batch, and people do end up in crime and drug dealing; I see it.”

Morgan says that after years of clinging to the dream of being a footballer, his salvation-in-disguise came when he broke a bone in his ankle while playing for non-league Hendon.

“The injury finally opened my eyes to real life,” he says. “I was out of the football bubble. My mind became clearer; I was thinking straight and realistically.”

Having worked part-time in a nursery, Morgan began working as a delivery driver, then qualified as an engineer for washing machines, fridges and other white goods. He is happy with the job and has plans to take his HGV license and start his own business; he has had the same partner for 10 years, plays for Beaconsfield Town in the Evo-Stik South East League, and feels, at 27, his life has come together.

“But I feel I had wasted years; I could have had this life six or seven years ago. I could have done things, gone travelling, but instead all I was thinking about was football. Really, there are hundreds of boys across the country, being set up to fail.”

Morgan’s son, Kairon, six, has been spotted by a Chelsea scout playing children’s football locally, and has been asked to go to their development centre. Clubs can run these pre-academy sessions for six-year-olds, before the first formal affiliation can start at eight. Morgan says he rejected three letters from Chelsea before succumbing to the classic parents’ dilemma, that he may be denying his son an opportunity, however remote. Kairon went, and there were 60 little boys there, says Morgan, who can see the disappointment stretching ahead for most of them.

He says he will try to guide his son to have realistic expectations, to enjoy it but take it sceptically. But so far, he has never gone along to watch, to actually see his boy taking his first steps into English football’s youth development system.

“I don’t know if I am mentally ready for that,” he says.

• In the UK the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.