Youth Football Development and the state of the game – An expert’s view (pt.II)

As we continue to look at youth football and youth development in the UK on Just Football, here is Part II of our exclusive in-depth interview with Chris Green, award-winning multimedia journalist, BBC Radio 5 Live broadcaster and author of Every Boy’s Dream – England’s Football Future on the Line. If you missed Part I head here to catch up. In Part II, Chris elaborates on the conflict at the top that is harming thousands of young boys’ dreams, the 25-man squad ruling and England’s successful U-17 side.

JF: To what extent do you think the vested interests of bodies such as the Premier League and the TV companies play a part in youth development? Do you think they are co-operative enough when it comes to facilitating youth development in English football?

Chris Green: There is no leadership when it comes to youth development in this country at the moment, and it saddens me to have to say in response to your question that’s my top line – there is no leadership. The previous body that dealt with it, the FA’s Technical Control Board, fell apart in 2006 amidst rancour from the FA who set the system up.

The academies are supposed to be operating under the licence granted them by the FA. But the FA has meekly in my opinion handed over the right to inspect these academies over to the leagues. As Trevor Brooking quite rightly said to me, it’s like marking your own exam paper. This is what was going on. The FA, to be fair, tried to stand up to the Premier League, but toys came out of various prams and that particular committee fell apart, and attempts to try and bring it back together at the start of 2009 fell drastically apart. It was a non-starter.

I mean, effectively what happens at the moment is when there’s any debate about how we can try and bring all the various elements of the game together, the Premier League throw their wad on the table and say ‘there we go, we’re the paymasters, do as we say or we’ll withdraw our support’. Roughly speaking the Football Leagues, if they want to side with the biggest boys in the playground, always side with the Premier League where they think the sheen will rub off on them, and they also fear that if proper inspections were made a certain number of academies in the Football League would have to close because they don’t meet the criteria. It’s a case of protecting themselves.

And the FA have really been quite weak over the years in terms of how they’ve tried to maintain a system that they developed. The crucial thing was when they handed over power because it means they no longer really control the system.

But although there’s goodwill from all sides, there’s also still, how can I put it, when we get away from football people and people who understand coaching and youth development, when we get away from the rational people who want to push things forward, when we get down to the suits, when we get down to the administrators, when we get down to the directors and the owners – the people who don’t give a toss about the lives of kids; I mean let’s look at the Premier League and some of the owners. What interest do they have in the welfare of kids in this country? Are they even concerned with these sorts of things in their own country? The argument do they care about kids in Britain just doesn’t come on the scale. So effectively what you have is an impasse there.

The game needs a lot more money at grassroots. It needs vast sums. We need to be able to educate kids to play football and enjoy and learn to love sport. Some of the money washing around at the top of the game needs to start drifting down so we can protect the game and develop boys that enjoy football and play football well.

There’s no relationship between the clubs that do that development work and the clubs who come rushing in and try too hard to find that gem rather than protecting all kids.

And until we’ve got a relationship there, and until the governing bodies in the game can come together as they do in other countries like Holland and Spain, where there is a proper unified structure, until we get vaguely close to that it’s hard to see the system improving. We’ll always produce players because kids want to play football. There’ll always be enough boys who’ll run their hearts out – and they come from Croxteth or whatever and want to fight their way out of the gutter. There’s always going to be enough kids like that.

But are they good enough quality in terms of world football now? Probably not. Are we doing it in the right way? Are clubs even thinking about making all the parents who’s kids go to the academy become supporters of the club, because they were so well treated and it was something the family felt almost obliged to do? I’m not so sure.

JF: England recently won the 2010 Under-17 European championships, and a new breed of young talent is emerging at senior level (Hart, Walcott, Gibbs, Carroll, Henderson etc). Is the situation really as critical as some have made out? Are we too hard on ourselves?

CG: It depends how you view the problems really. If your focus is solely looking at, does England produce players and win tournaments, I guess you could say it’s pretty disastrous. It’s moderately disappointing. From the club/country perspective, obviously a lot of people would rather see their club do well than the national side.

If you judge it from the point of view of – do we develop enough boys into skilful players? I look at people like Arsene Wenger. He didn’t start bringing in boys from other countries just because he’s French himself but because those boys are the best developed, you know? When I look at Academies in England, there are a handful who do it well and there are others who are just nowhere near it. A few years ago they were pretty good but I don’t think they are producing enough good players. I think the fact they’re getting lower and lower in the Premier League… and we’ll talk about the 25-man squad thing in a bit.

But if it wasn’t for these sorts of measures being introduced…the players aren’t breaking through are they? I mean supporting a club like West Brom like I do… we’ve not had a player come through the Academy in a decade who is palpably good enough! You look at Liverpool – take out Carragher and Gerrard and a few aspiring midfielders, there’s not much really from the Academy years. And Gerrard and Carragher were pre-Academy! So it’s pretty poor from that point of view.

Going back to this point, is all the heartache worth a handful of players getting through? If we look at the development of kids at 16-17, yes we’ve won a tournament which is good, and things in recent years do seem to have got a little bit better. We do seem to be getting a bit closer. But let’s not forget, when it came to the Under-21s we were thumped by Germany. And then the national team got thumped by Germany again, with many of the same players as at U-21 level. So their players clearly kick on, while I think a lot of ours don’t.

So a whole bunch of problems exist in terms of development of players for clubs and national squads, and boys just developing. I wonder sometimes, overall are we producing better players who play recreational and semi-pro football? I mean there’s no analysis done on this. I don’t suppose as it’s hard to do. But I wonder whether the quality of players has improved at that level.

I think the other big factor, and this is really interesting, how many of the 10,000 or so boys playing in the Academy system each year, what happens to them when they leave? What happens to them longer term? I’ve come across quite a lot of boys who don’t just give up playing football, they give up on sport completely because they’re fed up with the competition and the pressure, and being made nervous and taken away from school and their peer group and all the rest of it.

And you can’t blame 15/16 year old kids for feeling like that if the game is hurting them. So I think there are a variety of ways of judging it, but if we have to judge it on the main criteria of people in the national teams etc we do alright. If we think of that as the main yardstick, which I don’t.

JF: Since Every Boy’s Dream was published in 2009 a few new rules and regulations have emerged. What are your thoughts on a) the 25 man squad rules in the PL and b) Financial Fair Play, and their potential impacts on English football at youth and grassroots level? Are they steps in the right direction?

JF: In the book you cite England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 as one of the most significant things to ever happen to the national game. Would you also fit England’s performance at the World Cup 2010 into that category?

CG: Well, two questions there. The 2010 World Cup I think was equitable to 2008. The case I spelt out in the book was the economic need for England to do well. I mean people in jobs working for sportswear manufacturers and the pub industry. You could argue that not reaching a tournament is actually more of a hammer blow to Great Britain PLC than anything else.

But I think losing to a small country at home, and the skill factor of Croatia as well compared to England – I mean I’m too young to remember England’s first defeat on home soil to Hungary’s Magnificent Magyars in 1953 and the impact that had on English football, but in my era I would say the defeat to Croatia was equitable to that.

I think the 2010 World Cup – obviously anything that happens at a World Cup is more dramatic because more people are watching it. You could argue the economic impact wasn’t so great because the shirts had been bought, the beer had been loaded into the fridge and the pizzas were ready! Did it make an impact in terms of the way the game is approached in England? Barely. I don’t think there’s been a shudder has there really, and the Premier League just carries on doing what it does.

I think the 25-man rule was already shaped anyway. It will make marginal impact I think, it was a soft rule to buy off people with the idea that we need to improve home-grown development. To include players who, I mean if you look at the number of foreign players you can have in your squad that can make up those home-grown players its laughable really.

I mean at West Brom we’ve got them here there and everywhere. We’ve got this tall lamppost of a striker called Chris Wood who’s gone out on loan to two clubs already, who qualified as one of the 25 and he’s from New Zealand. He played at the World Cup but he’ll never play in the Premier League. And the idea that he counts as home-grown is just laughable really. Players like that strike a blow for home-grown development.

Wenger and co bringing them in at 16 and then they qualify as home-grown; there’s too many of those. If there was really large numbers of boys genuinely coming through the Academies and filling those spaces I might sit up and take notice, but it just hasn’t turned out that way. And sadly…it’s a little, and an improvement and some sort of acknowledgement, but I don’t think it will have much impact in terms of real, proper development.

I was pleased to see it happen, like I was pleased to see managerial qualifications get tightened up, which was another bugbear of mine in the early 2000s. But if they can be got around then the game is kind of building the jailhouse but leaving the gate open.

Coming up in Part III, the final instalment, we look at how to change youth football development in the UK for the better. What can we do to improve? Is the national football centre in Burton the answer? Chris assesses all that and more in Part III. Subscribe to Just Football or follow us on Twitter to keep up-to-date.

Interviews, Youth Academies, Youth Football