Can we better prepare players and parents for Academy Football and the outcomes?

This is a topic that has always fascinated me, and one I wanted to explore more when I was given the opportunity to discuss this with the very credible Dr Chris Platts.

I was able to share with Chris my own experiences and some conversations with players.

“Imagine the lad you described 4 years earlier, being able to predict that, because that journey is incredibly common” There is power in the data-driven approach to player care. Data is used in so many other areas of professional football, so why not in career planning?

Chris has spent over a decade in research in this field and is passionate about following the data to predictable outcomes. For someone that is so extremely well qualified and able to articulate the pros and cons of the industry he comes across extremely personal, humble and easy going. I have met plenty of people in football that are highly qualified and highly positioned, that rather than carry an aura, they instead carry rather a significant ego. This is certainly not the case with Dr Chris Platts, and the more I spoke to him the more I felt that he is an incredible asset for football clubs, and should be made readily available to parents and players. I could also see him providing excellent thought provoking sessions for coaches, he certainly had that impression on me.

I have worked around professional academy football for around 17 years and seen a lot of excellent work, and some areas I feel could be improved upon. One topic I have thought about a lot is player reporting and the player review meetings. Dr Chris Platts ' calm and intelligent approach to these delicate topics enabled me to really take in my own performance and think what I can do better. I heard about this comment that a parent said, "The coaches talk to my 10 year old like an adult but talk to me like a child". This is so thought provoking and due to my time with Chris I was able to understand it and process it better, leading to a better response. Since talking to Chris I had realised myself that in self reflection I had missed all those opportunities in those parents meetings to engage better. Now, as a parent I aways thought I could empathise better, but could I have shared more detail about the development and involved them more? Absolutely I could. I was always acutely aware that no one is more important in that child's life than the parents/guardians. They always simply want the best for their child and not all are blindly living their broken dreams through their child.

When you really stop and consider the value of wellbeing, and talking to the many players I coached that are now adults and with some struggling, I wonder, did we spend enough time on the topic? I thought back, and all clubs had welfare representation, but they are typically a reactive resource. I rarely seen activities that took the topic and actually genuinely put the topic on the same importance level as the other learning and development core topics. There was many words, many books, leaflets, but it wasn't given time. So when you look at the four corner coaching model and other clubs DNA frameworks, you will see the topics and many descriptive words. But if it really was given the same value, I truly wonder if it would a) improve the clubs performance in terms of player success rates and b) would better prepare players for life after professional football?

You can listen to the full podcast here: https://www.mccooltotalk.com/e/navigating-academy-football-with-dr-chris-platts/ and on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1m4rFEGZpfWFu4udjbV1FD?si=PJ0uhW3oSf-0Sl4FRFJQnA

Thankyou to Dr Chris Platts who you can find our more from here: https://www.chrisplatts.co.uk/