From joining my local club in Dublin named Swords Celtic as a 6 year old to the day I played my last game for Belvedere FC as a 15 year old before jetting off to sign my scholarship at West Brom, winning was everything. Each year there was a League title and two cup competitions and even as 6/7 year olds, the importance of winning was there. I can remember my first cup final as 9 year old and I can’t even describe the nerves I felt before that game. A lot of people would argue, at that age football should just be about playing for fun but personally I disagree.
After my first few months at West Brom, I was quite shocked at the lack of emphasis placed on winning games. There’s more of a focus on player development rather than winning games throughout academy football in England, but the issue I have with that is it creates a selfish attitude amongst players like ‘We lost but it doesn’t matter cause I played well.’ I understand the view of focusing on player development but there needs to be a balance and I believe from an early age young footballers should play regular competitive games where there is pressure placed on them to win. I personally believe this will result in academies producing more players.
Players will join academies at U9s and move through the system right up until U23s and at the majority of clubs throughout England there might only be a handful of games each year where there is an emphasis placed on winning. This is where the academy system is going wrong in my opinion. The best youth TEAMS will produce the most players and Chelsea are the prime example of that. They’ve won 5 out of the past 6 FA Youth Cups and 3 UEFA Youth Leagues (U19 champions league) and now there first team squad has 8 academy graduates who feature regularly. Is this a coincidence? I don’t think so.
The loan system in England will ultimately make or break a young players career and the reason the majority struggle is they don’t understand how to win football games, they’ve spent their whole football career focused on themselves as an individual rather than understanding what it takes as a team to win games. Players go from playing on a Monday night in front of 150 people with no pressure to playing in front of 2000+fans with men who have families and mortgages and rely on their win bonus each week. These youngsters have never felt pressure before in their football career and then they go into an environment like that and the majority just crumble. The gap between U23 football and senior football in England is just far too big.
Some may question now ‘why doesn’t Ireland produce tonnes of players?’ Well, the simple reason is in Ireland there is no full-time academies, kids will only train with their clubs 2/3 times a week max whereas in England kids are in full-time programmes from the age of 9. Mix the two systems together and in my opinion you have a perfect environment for young players. If kids were in a full-time programme with a competitive fixture list, I believe a lot more players would be produced.
A case for the defence 