Firstly success at an international level for juniors does not reflect in success at Senior International level.

Having said that I believe our pathways have too narrow a focus. To explain further in Australia we select a handfull of kids to represent their state, in futsal starting from U11 and for outfield U13, they invaribly move up the pathways generally playing year after year for their state then selected for State run Academeis from this pool players are selected for the AIS. All this based on the knowledge that you cannot tell if a 12yo or 13yo is going to "make it", yet we as a football nation make an initial selection from this age pool and place our resources into this group as they progress. As a nation we are acting as a singular Club. The Australian system is no bigger than one major or mid ranked European or South American Club.

Yet one project that was broad based focussed, V-Elite in Victoria, was dismantled replaced by a State Fedration controlled junior competition. And a broad based development system iin "Project 22" will be dismantled to be replaced by a similar system, I suppose, as Victoria's.

Yet the FFA institutes a magnificent program the Skill Acquisition Program which mirrors V-Elite and Project 22.

But of course the core issue no comes through that all over the world junior development is done by clubs. In Australia this is being taken away from them and run by the defacto football State,it won't work, it hasn't worked. As well as taking our brightest and best young coaches into the FFA coaching realm where they become glorified public servants without the day to day coaching and competitive matches week in week out their coaching skills will go backwards.






Sorry to take the liberty of posting this here, Arthur, but like Dirk I think this is a succinct and sage post about youth development in Australia. I've probably been subconsciously aware of this, but I've been too thick to see the bigger picture until seeing this post. We've had a lot of discussion off forum about this topic in the last few days.

There is fertile ground for further discussion in Performance on this topic.