Henry Winter: Premier League's elite plan radical overhaul of academy system to help top schoolboy talent
Leading Premier League clubs such as Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea want to replicate the hothouse intensity of the Royal Ballet School and Yehudi Menuhin Music School, even introducing a boarding-school system so they can work more closely with the nation’s most gifted schoolboys.

England are painfully behind other nations in youth development; Barcelona’s team of all the talents visit Arsenal on Wednesday with up to seven home-grown products, such as Xavi, Pedro and Andrés Iniesta, in their starting line-up.

“Barcelona can achieve a lot because they have four times as much money as our clubs because of individual TV selling rights and they can pool young talent nationally,” said Richard Scudamore, the Premier League’s chief executive, on Monday.

The second point is one he seeks to copy with the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan, which splits clubs into four categories of excellence from the 2012-13 season. This will give leading clubs, those who qualify for category one, access to the country’s top prospects and, most significantly, trebling the time spent working on their skills.

“This is a supertanker that’s very difficult to stop now,” said Scudamore of the Premier League’s blueprint for better dream factories. “It’s a strong force going in a positive direction.”

The data demands urgent action be taken.

On average, a young player in Spain will have enjoyed 4,880 hours contact time with an elite club such as Barcelona from the ages of nine to 21. Holland and France pour even more time into coaching youngsters, 5,940 hours and 5,740 hours respectively. An English tyro will have only 3,760.

Under the FA’s Charter for Quality introduced in 1997, Premier League clubs are permitted three hours’ contact time a week with nine to 11 year-olds, those progressing through what Dennis Bergkamp calls the “golden years of learning”.

In the 12-16 age group, English contenders are limited to five hours a week while those at Bergkamp’s Ajax have 10-12. Wonder why England struggle? Do the maths.

“Our boys are disadvantaged compared to European boys, where they have full-time, well paid coaches,” said the Premier League’s head of youth, Jed Roddy. “We’ve made it very easy for managers to resource their clubs from abroad.”

The Premier League is taking inspiration from the world of music and dance. At the Menuhin music school, each budding virtuoso has 10,840 hours of contact time in their development years, three times the football figure. Pupils at the Royal Ballet receive 10,000 hours’ tuition.

The supply line to England needs improving and Roddy believes that “it could be 10 years before the benefits are fully felt”. Although talents such as Jack Wilshere are emerging, the crisis in youth development is not simply related to technical deficiencies.

Some academy directors despair at the declining fitness levels of English youth, particularly in the under-resourced state sector. Everton have even begun sending coaches into primary schools.

Premier League plans coincide with a new FA coaching strategy, focusing more on small-sided games, a philosophy that the more enlightened clubs, such as United, have long advocated. The FA will help coach the coaches at their National Football Centre at Burton, so providing the elite with more specialist, age-appropriate coaches.

Most controversially, Premier League clubs have even discussed the possibility of bridging the gap between academy and first-team by fielding teams in the Football League. However, it was deemed “too radical” by Scudamore and “offensive” by Andy Williamson, the Football League’s chief operating officer.

Overall, the Premier League’s pursuit of excellence should be applauded, but the elite body must ensure the Football League is not badly damaged by what could be deemed a land grab. Upstairs must look after downstairs.

Of the 23 England players who travelled to Copenhagen last week, 13 spent part or all of their development years at Football League clubs. Two others, Wilshere (Luton Town) and David Stockdale (York City), also benefited briefly. “There’s a big risk for England if we get cut away,” said Greg Clarke, the chairman of the Football League.

Under the new Elite Player Performance Plan, some of those nurtured at Clarke’s clubs will migrate even earlier to the elite. So compensation levels must be properly weighted to safeguard smaller clubs’ survivals. “But if the player is too expensive, there’ll be an incentive to go abroad,” warned Scudamore.

Football League fears are real. Clarke hosts a series of chairman dinners with the leading lights at his 72 clubs. “They tell me the No 1 or No 2 issue is youth development and some say they can’t stay in business if it goes,” Clarke said. “We are concerned that 30 to 40 clubs would give up youth development.”

As usual in football, the tension comes down to money. “Looking at the Deloittes figures into Premier League club accounts, the amounts [on compensation] are not exactly going to break the bank,” Clarke said. “The £50 million Chelsea spent on Fernando Torres is equal to the cost of running all Football League youth development for a year – with £10 million spare.”

Clarke also pointed to the human cost. “We mustn’t screw up kids’ lives,” Clarke said. “One minute they think they are going to be the next Wayne Rooney, the next they are being released by a Premier League club and dumped back on their council estate. Let’s develop the hell out of our kids but let’s not sacrifice them on the altar of football efficiency.”

For all the sympathy with any 16 year-old released by a Premier League club, he can still rebuild his career at one of Clarke’s clubs.

English football must accept the law of the jungle if England are to become powerful again.

English youth soccer system may lack, but still tops ours

From the Evansville Courier Press, February 27, 2011

On a recent trip to England, I found some radical differences between how we develop our young players here in the United States.

Evansville Soccer Club president Jim King and I spent a couple of days at the Manchester City Football Club youth academy, where we watched some of their youth teams train and met with their academy staff.

Here were some unique items that stood out with the young academy players, teams and coaches:

n Frequency of training: Even at the under-8 level, the players practice regularly. The average under-8 teams in the English Premier League academies get together three times a week, twice for practices, and once for a game.

n Players taken out of their comfort zone: As early as u-8, teams play against older opposition. We watched Manchester City's under-8 team play against Stockport County's under-9. While there were certainly times where they were overmatched physically, you could see them growing in confidence from competing against opposition that was stronger and faster. My guess is that those experiences translate pretty well when they return to play teams their own age.

n Score: I was very impressed by the focus of the youth academy coaches on the process (teaching and coaching how to play), opposed to a focus on the outcome (too much emphasis on winning). I can't recall any of the spectators or players referencing the score at any time. The standard of how the teams were trying to play was very high, and without the fear of failure seemed to develop confidence in the young players.

n Referees: I was very surprised that there were no referees for the match. Coaches would stop the game if a foul was committed, but there might have been three fouls in the entire game.You could see that players were physical while playing the game the right way — tackling with a minimal amount of fouling. Players never complained or looked to an official for help; when a player was knocked off the ball, he immediately bounced up and recovered in transition.

n Parents: What most shocked me was how the parents behaved. Parents only applauded after a goal was scored or at the end of a period, and never addressed their children at any time during the game. When asked why, one of the parents told King that "we aren't allowed to say anything to kids." I was amazed to see how much buy-in the parents had in this process, and what kind of compromise that they were able to make to have their children play in an English Premier League academy with aspirations of someday becoming a professional.

While on our trip, I read a newspaper column by Henry Winter of The Telegraph about how the English Academy system was behind in youth development from the likes of the Barcelona academy I wrote about weeks ago. Winter wrote that England was painfully behind other nations in youth development; Barcelona's team of all the talents visited Arsenal recently with up to seven home-grown products, such as Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, in their starting lineup. Arsenal is as gifted a team as there is in the EPL and has only had 2 players — Jack Wilshere and Theo Walcott — that have come out of the EPL academy system.

The primary focus of Winter's article was on the number of hours that young academy players train in England in comparison to the top soccer nations of the world. On average, a young player in Spain will have enjoyed 4,880 hours of contact time with an elite club such as Barcelona from the ages of 9 to 21. Holland and France pour even more time into coaching youngsters, 5,940 hours and 5,740 hours respectively. An English tyro will have only 3,760.

Under the FA's Charter for Quality introduced in 1997, Premier League clubs are permitted three hours' contact a week with 9- to 11 year-olds (excluding games), which tends to be the golden years of learning.

In the 12-16 age group, English contenders are limited to five hours a week (excluding games) while those at Ajax (Holland) have 10 to 12. Wonder why England is perceived to struggle in comparison? Do the math.

The Premier League is taking inspiration from the world of music and dance. At the Menuhin music school, each budding virtuoso has 10,840 hours of contact time in their development years, three times the football figure. Pupils at the Royal Ballet receive 10,000 hours' tuition.

What I couldn't get over was that as deficient as Winter described the English academy system, it was still significantly ahead of where we are in the United States. Our young players play a similar number of hours a week as our English counterparts, but even they are saying that it's not enough.

If we could find a way to get more hours for our players to play and learn (without stifling interest and enthusiasm), we can certainly catch up to the other top soccer nations of the world.

Mike Jacobs is soccer coach at the University of Evansville.

While actual numbers or hours spent training are important what is most important is what is taught and how it is taught.

If Barcelona's development system is the benchmark why are'nt all the juniors comming through that system the best players in Spain?