A new blueprint for the English game will start in June that will see football club academies being assessed independently. The Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore believes that this change will be the foundation for more talented home grown players in the future. With the influx of foreign players in the Premier League over the last two decades and the England national team’s failure in international tournaments – this looks like a positive move.
The plan will follow a system used in the German Bundesliga where each of the club’s football academies will be graded independently rather than meeting a general FA standard. It will coincide with the FA’s Charter for Quality which started in the last ’90s and has improved grass roots level football for players and coaches, but it has not been enough.
We are still awaiting the FA’s National Football Centre in Burton which is set to be completed by 2012. The centre has been in place since 2001 and is supposed to be the hub for English football; from where all levels of the national team train, to where coaches will be learning and developing their skills, whilst also being a base for the likes of the LMA. However, the funds of this complex were stalled in 2004 in order for Wembley Stadium to be completed.
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Scudamore feels there is English talent that is not being developed enough into the professional game and he believes this new plan will make a change in the future. He highlighted the levels of coaching and the coaching hours given to young people in this country is to be improved. This comes off the back of another poor World Cup for England with the media highlighting the likes of Spain and Germany having a workable and rewarding system in place.
However, is it all too little too late? With the likes of Spain and Germany already expected to be even better by the next World Cup, it seems like the English FA is still lagging behind. Perhaps their decision to finish off Wembley Stadium rather than the Football Centre shows where the FA’s priorities are at. If more effort and commitment was put into coaching and grass roots football as it is into stadiums, marketing and profit, then the English FA would have something to be proud of, on and off the pitch.
The article was written by Matt G-Freebody for FootballFancast.com. Make sure to check out the latest news, blogs and podcasts at FFC – ed.
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It would only be late if the country wants a win in the next available international tournament. That would make the project’s ambitions non-viable. However, if England is patient enough, like Spain and Germany, the country needs to give itself ample time for any such thing to be realized and invaluable lessons learned and acted upon.
As an example, if the English FA targets those below ten years, it would take at least another decade for those juniors to start impacting at national level. Of course there’d be various promotional tournaments and ways of grading before that, e.g. U17 tournaments.
However, a better idea related to time would be to create a self-sustaining system, like that of Spain or Germany, where each year sees a new crop of good youngsters graduate to the next playing stage. This would be the only way to ensure tournaments are won, and the success model is maintained in the future years.
Lateness here is wholly dependent on how soon the FA targets international and national success.