Since the start of 2020, I have been researching career pathways of current under-23 players across Europe’s top five leagues. As a result, I have so far distinguished five different routes into professional football. This post is dedicated to the first of them, which I called the English route. It is about players who joined a professional club academy at a young age and progressed all the way through the ranks right up to the same club’s senior first-team.
The original idea for my project – and this blog – came from Ben Knight.
The Chelsea Academy coach was one of the guest speakers at the Lech Conference event in Poznań last December when he showcased just how many of the club’s recent youth graduates have been at Chelsea from a very young age.
The likes of Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori were both seven when they first joined the Blues. Mason Mount, Reece James and Callum Hudson-Odoi were all six.
CONTROVERSY
The subject of organising training groups for and coaching – let alone scouting – children aged so young by the very top European football clubs seems to have been attracting more and more controversy.
Manchester City’s under-5 elite squad, who reportedly train three times a week, has been described as absolute madness by the Head of Talent and Performance for UK Coaching.
“It will be in the child’s head that they are a footballer, because they’re in the ‘elite squad’”, Nick Levett has argued.
“The reality is that they will probably be released by the age of nine. There’s the issue of identity foreclosure, in which the child has an identity without having explored other options or ideas. When that’s shattered there can be wellbeing issues.
“At the age of 10 or 11 they are in a better place to cope with that, but not at four. Don’t take a photo like the first team. Don’t call it elite.
“There are also the kids who haven’t been selected for the elite squad. To be told you are not good enough at four, when you can’t eat your tea without spilling some is just not common sense. The worry is it becomes common practice.”
In fact – and in stark contrast – Bayern Munich last month announced they were going to scrap their under-9 and under-10 club academy squads.
“By taking this step, we would like to create more free-time opportunities for the youngest children so that they could also try out other sports”, explained the Bayern Academy sports coordinator at the U9 to U15 age level, Peter Wenninger.
“Long-term studies have shown that learning different sporting skills and abilities can have a positive impact on everyone’s football performance.”
“With this step, children should be able to develop longer in the home environment of their local clubs without the pressure to perform nor additional time [spend on travelling]”, added the Bayern Academy deputy sports director, Holger Seitz.
I touched upon this topic here, too.
THE ENGLISH ROUTE
What does not work for Bayern seems to be working for other clubs, though.
The German Champions currently have just one single player in their entire first-team squad who was born in Bavaria. Thomas Müller made his senior debut 12 years ago and did not make it via the English route regardless.
However, it is not only Chelsea that produce professional footballers who joined the club before the age of 10.
Arsenal have four under-23s who made it all the way through their academy system while left-back Kieran Tierney had done the same at Celtic.
Joe Willock was as young as four years of age when he first started training with the Gunners having been allowed to participate in training sessions alongside his older brother Chris.
Meanwhile, Trent Alexander-Arnold has been at Liverpool since the age of six. Scott McTominay and Mason Greenwood joined Manchester United’s development centres in Preston and Halifax respectively at similar age. Marcus Rashford has been at the club since the age of seven, having earlier spent two years at local club Fletcher Moss Rangers.
Manchester City – yes, them too – also have first-team players who went the English route. Stockport-born Phil Foden was scouted aged nine. Potential future stars Tommy Doyle and Taylor Harwood-Bellis, who both made their senior debuts this season, have been at the club since the age of five and six respectively.
If you happen to have been born in a city or close to one, it seems you have a chance of joining a professional club academy at an (very) early age and then break through into the same club’s first-team.
And not only in England.
In fact, you can find examples of players who went the English route in other countries, too.
Ferran Torres is just one of a number of Valencia proper youth products. Hertha Berlin have recently had an impressive record in Germany. AC Milan and Olympique Marseille have done well in Italy and France respectively.
Rayan Cherki was also very young when Olympique Lyonnais first took hold of him.
AWARENESS
It appears joining a professional club academy at a tender age does not have to be harmful for a player’s development.
There have already been too many successful examples that have proved otherwise.
It seems important to be able to overcome common truths.
Training at a professional club academy at a young age does not need to be highly stressful nor it needs to be relentlessly competitive.
Back in Poznań last December, Ben Knight showed how Chelsea’s youngest age group begin the season by travelling to a two-day integration camp rather than straight away going to a big football tournament.
The level of awareness seems high.
“If you get very professional at a young age then these kids are going to burn out“, the Manchester United Academy manager Nick Cox has acknowledged. “Maybe their love and joy of the game is diminished and we don’t want that.
“We like to go slow and steady and make the experiences the boys have with us to be childlike, appropriate and authentic.
“No-one really quite understands where players are going to get to in the long term and we have to be really honest about that. We’ve designed a system in this country that kind of gives the impression we know.
“Actually we don’t know and anyone who claims to is probably ill-informed.”
And yes, at the same time, the English route may not be for everyone.
Footballers break through in various ways, which my research has so far proved.
VISIT THIS BLOG NEXT WEEK TO LEARN ABOUT THE FRENCH ROUTE.
In the picture: Joe Willock has been at Arsenal since the age of four (found here)
BREAKTHROUGH 