Age of Recruitment into the Academy System: Skating on One Night Ice?

Summary of my Self-Led CPD W/B: 12.09.22

Age of Recruitment into the Academy System: Skating on One Night Ice?

By Matthew Lever

My reading this week has been around the age of entry into the academy system. My profession (teaching) and early life studies have given me a good grasp of childhood development, so I’ve got a fair bit of background knowledge where this is concerned but I wanted to look a little deeper into the benefits and detriments of children joining academies at different ages. When does/should playing football become a serious business?

Youth academies appear to have struck an arms race with one another, looking as closely as ever at the youngest age brackets. Tony Carr {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Carr}, previously Academy Manager at West Ham United FC , who is a man I have incredible amounts of respect for (honestly, if you are unaware of him go and look at his achievements. He’s an inspiration to anyone in football) says that; “the earlier you can get them [the kids] in, the better. By the time they are U12, if we haven’t spotted them, then someone else obviously has.” (Never show that quote to a 12-year-old by the way!)

Whereas Marjin Bruker of AZ Alkmaar , who has a phenomenal record of bringing through young talent states on the excellent Training Ground Guru Podcast #23 {https://trainingground.guru/articles/marijn-beuker-thinking-differently-with-az-alkmaar} that; “we do not want to skate on one-night ice (which is a phrase I love and am determined to remember!) Indeed, the average age of recruitment into AZ’s academy is 11.8 years old (so U12…). He goes on to say that “if you reach the U13s of AZ, then you have a 46% chance of becoming a professional footballer. On the other hand, a recent study from 英国谢菲尔德哈莱姆大学 , ‘Measures of Academy Productivity in English Championship clubs’ by Balassiano and Bullough (2021) {https://shura.shu.ac.uk/28203/7/Bullough-MeasuresAcademyProductivity%28AM%29.pdf}, concluded that ‘30% of all players recruited at U8/9 will go onto sign scholarship forms (not necessarily professional terms) with the club. Everyone has heard the stat that 0.05 of the players in the academy system will go on to play professionally for their clubs but I wanted to delve a little deeper into the entry age. ??

The two graphics below are from ‘Progression from youth to professional soccer: A longitudinal study of successful and unsuccessful academy graduates’ by Dugdale and Sanders (2021) {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341050690_Progression_from_youth_to_professional_soccer_A_longitudinal_study_of_successful_and_unsuccessful_academy_graduates}, they ‘examined differences in the age of player recruitment alongside longitudinal performance differences on field-based fitness tests of successful vs. unsuccessful graduates across the entire age spectrum recruited by a professional soccer academy’ 537 players in total.

I think they show quite clearly that:

·????????Children between 8 and 9 who join the academy are unusually unsuccessful

·????????There is a jump up in success rate in the U10 age bracket which is sustained in the U11 category

·????????There is another sizable jump in success rate in the U12 age category, which is broadly sustained through to U16 ??

Whilst Dugdale and Sanders (2021) concluded that:

‘Of the 537 players, only 53 (10%) players recruited to the academy were successful in obtaining a professional contract. Of the successful players, 68% were recruited to the academy at 12 years of age or older. While those recruited at 16?years of age achieved the greatest percentage of success, only two players from this age group obtained a contract.’

Obviously, this is just a brain dump of what I’ve read this week, but Dugdale and Sanders’ (2021) findings revealed that ‘Individuals recruited at an earlier age did not display the higher probability of success in attaining a professional contract. Moreover, “successful” academy graduates only physically outperformed their “unsuccessful” counterparts from ~13-14?years of age, with no differences in performance or, performance on physical fitness tests favouring “unsuccessful” players before this age. It is argued that early recruitment into a professional academy is important when considering absolute outcomes of long-term success in soccer, however, when considering physical performance characteristics, our findings suggest otherwise.’ f success rates in predicting player performance are so low until the U12 age category, why are clubs so keen to scout so early? Moreover, why are 30% of those players retained when so few (none in many cases) make the step to becoming a professional footballers??