It is over a decade since Howard Wilkinson’s Charter for Quality reforms changed the youth development system in England, and it appears that the time has come for another revamp of the youth set-up in this country. The Premier League have announced the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which if fully approved could come in as early as next year, making whole-scale changes to the academy set up in this country. The aim of the plan is to revamp the youth development system in order to produce more top quality home-grown players to benefit both clubs and the national team.
The EPPP is a dramatic reform, which paves the way for clubs to match the Barcelona model of training youngsters. Current rules limit coaching hours and place travel restrictions on young players, but this plan aims to change all that. It is aiming to bring in 15-20 hours of coaching time per week for ages 9-16, up from the current target of 5 hours, which will bring it closer into line with other European countries. Coaching is currently limited to 2,000 hours between the ages of 10 and 18, but the EPPP would up that to around 10,000 hours, which will no doubt make a huge difference to the young players in England. It also aims to scrap the travel rule, which currently only allows sides to sign players based within 90 minutes travelling distance of the club. The new plan would mean that the bigger clubs could effectively take players from different areas and move them into a residential complex on site, the thought behind it being that the most promising players can only benefit from playing amongst the best.
Under the proposals, clubs youth operations will be put into one of four categories or tiers. Clubs in the highest tier will have far fewer restrictions placed upon them in terms of the amount of coaching time they can provide per week, and the age at which a child can be trained, also the travel restrictions will not apply to them. The cost of equipping a category one or two training facility means that these tiers will be out of reach for the majority of Football League clubs who have produced exceptional talent in the past. Restrictions in terms of accessing players will apply to tier three and four clubs, which could then force them to abandon their youth operations altogether, as they will not get access to players until a much later age. This could effectively mean that the best youngsters will all end up at the bigger clubs no matter where they come from, as the smaller clubs might not have the funds or resources, to be able to compete in this area.
Manchester City have already announced plans for a huge new training complex, which would place them at the forefront of youth development in this country. Fortunately for them they are in the luxury position of being able to create such a complex, but the teams that will be able to achieve anything like this are few and far between. The EPPP could rule out very good academies because of money, which is wholly unfair to smaller clubs.
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