“I believe the children are our future...”

Randy Watson once sang “I believe the children are our future...” or was that Whitney Houston? Whoever it was they were spot on, if you look around the city and county, or even across the water, clubs need to have a line coming through the club and feeding the “Top” team in the club. Manchester United, Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool they all have players playing first team that came through the youth system. Clubs need this, if they don’t they need a rich Russian or Arab at the other end to buys players. League One and League Two teams need their youth system to produce at least one player a season that they can sell to a bigger club just so they can survive. I’m sure the lower league teams would love to keep onto their players but they just have to sell.

In the Premier the Elite Player Performance Plan was introduced last year to develop a long term strategy for player development, they have six main points:

·    Increase the number and quality of Home Grown Players gaining professional contracts in the clubs and playing first-team football at the highest level
·    Create more time for players to play and be coached
·    Improve coaching provision
·    Implement a system of effective measurement and quality assurance
·    Positively influence strategic investment into the Academy System, demonstrating value for money
·    Seek to implement significant gains in every aspect of player development

These six fundamentals are helped by four main points:

·    Coaching
·    Classification
·    Compensation
·    Education

Altogether these points go hand in hand, but over here we cannot live by these because of  the nature of the amateur sport, but we can cherry pick or choose which points we can use and implement these in our own clubs through academies or our schoolboy/girl section. The main EPPP areas we can use:

·    Allowing clubs to have more coaching time with their young players
·    Helping clubs foster links with local schools in order to help young players get the best out of their football education as well as the academic side
·    Allowing clubs that have earned a top category grading to recruit young talent from further afield than is permitted under the current rules

If clubs implement an academy or train their coaches properly then in the long term we will see huge benefits within the clubs and players, with Castleview you can see this, fantastic youth policy. At least 4 players are regulars with the senior team and more are coming through with our under 19’s recently winning the premier league at their age level. 

So if we pick our own strategy using the EPPP points we can see this:

·    Create more time for players to play and be coached

·    Improve coaching provision

·    Implement a system of effective measurement and quality assurance

If we can hit these goals, the class of player coming through youth systems will be enormous, along with the FAI who are trying to get as many volunteers qualified in coaching we will have alot more coaches within the clubs that will be coaching players properly rather than a run around and a kick about, then players will start to enjoy football even more. 

Who knows, in 10-15 years time we could have a Wayne Rooney or Steven Gerrard on our hands, only time will tell!

Dean