19 Sep 2017 15:02:17
Ed01. You are normally on the ball with these type of situations.
I am just reading a piece on Huddersfield and the fact they have downgraded their Academy from a Category 2 to a Category 4 as a cost saving exercise and as such are only retaining the U23 and U18 squads.
What do you make of this situation in the short and long term for both the club and football in general if this were to happen to other clubs.
And the Man U related piece - The report claims that four players namely, Raj Mahmood, Rocco Fragapane, Harvey Rowe and Sam Murray are at Carrington at the moment as United take a closer look with a view of potentially signing them for their youth setup.
Do you happen to know anything about any of these players please?
thanks.

{Ed001's Note - there are a number of clubs who have already done the same, Huddersfield are following a model from them that has shown signs of success at this early stage. The academies are pretty much a waste of time for any club that is unable to go with a Cat A to be honest. What Huddersfield are doing might not be the answer, but they need to try something else. Something has to change because youth development in English football is a mess and the current model just hasn't worked.
I know very little about the 4 sorry. I could ask a couple of United's youth scouts if they have any info, but I don't think they are in their age group so they might not know anything about them.}

1.) 20 Sep 2017
19 Sep 2017 23:27:50
Ed haven't England just had there most successful summer for the junior teams, so surely something is working.

{Ed001's Note - you are missing the point, it is working for the teams with the money to flood into the academy. For little clubs like Huddersfield, with very little money, it is failing badly. As for the most successful summer, winning trophies is not the aim of a youth academy or youth teams, it is producing players for the first team. There are still very few players coming through, the league is still flooded with imports at all levels. So it clearly is not working or the academy products would be flooding the market by now in place of the imports.}

2.) 20 Sep 2017
20 Sep 2017 12:19:50
Youth football in England is an interesting one. I think the whole system needs a total overhaul. It's not working and it hasn't worked for years.

The FA should be the people to sort this out. Maybe the best solution would be to remove the expectancy/ burden of youth football from professional clubs. They have neglected it for years and clearly it shouldn't be in their hands.

Could we see the FA run all youth football, set up a local club system within the county system. That way talented lads wouldn't be forced to move away from home to get to a top academy as a child. The FA could be in charge of training all youth players then we could have a draft system in place. If you had that operate in January instead of a January transfer window then it would give those kids half a season to prove themselves before the clubs had a chance to buy in replacements.

You then replace the homegrown rule with a draft rule instead. Start off with 3 of your 25 man squad have to be drafted players, then increase that year on year until you got to say 7 or 8 have to be draft picks.

With the amount of money in English football due to TV money ect the FA could easily redistribute the money so there is plenty there for youth development.

{Ed001's Note - or go the whole hog and have a school/college system like in the US?}

3.) 21 Sep 2017
20 Sep 2017 23:28:43
That would only work if the FA were to financially incentivise the schools. State school budgets are so far stretched they couldn't afford to offer a professionally qualified specialist football coach. So there would still have to be a heavy amount of funding from the FA to make that work. Plus you would have the issue in England of whether a school being incentivise to coach kids football was in the children's best interest and how ethical that is. Personally I think it would be a massive minefield and the results would take too long to come to fruition, which means you probably wouldn't be able to defend the process adequately until 10 years down the line and you started to see high quality youth players come through. The naysayers would have had the system scraped long before then.

The issue with involving schools is you then become answerable to parents, teachers, school governors, the education authority and the government. All who have vested interests that aren't to do with bring quality footballers through.

That's why I think keeping it separate from schools would be for the best. Maybe if you had a system that worked and was proven to work over a long period of time you could then integrate it with the school system. But the education system in this country is in no place to try and go for something like this at the moment.

You can have county championships, and FA funded youth academies competing in it. Right up until they get drafted by professional clubs. You can then set up a scholarship type set up for those who don't make the cut to go to University if they wish.