Londoncentric Thinking

Many countries across Europe are currently enjoying following their national football teams in Euro 2008 where us English people have to watch other countries enjoying the party whilst wishing we were there as every game gets screened live on terrestrial TV.

When England failed to qualify the national board the FA promised a what they were calling a root and branch investigation to get to the bottom of our nation’s failures over recent years to compete on the worldwide stage as well as the current lack of English born players currently plying their trade in the Premier League.

As many of you are aware I am actively involved in youth football in my local area so I was interested to see what changes if any were going to be made at grassroot level. So now months on from that investigation and I receive some news via local channels on new rulings from the national FA board.

For year’s professional football clubs and county organisations have ran academies. This is where they select the best players from the area to get trained by them and use their facilities whilst competing in a fixture programme against other academies. For girls football it use to be that girls could play for an academy side whilst still playing for their local youth side but now the FA are soon to either vote on or pass a regulation saying that if they play for an academy they can no longer player for their local youth side.

Now this may work in big cities where they have a wealth of players but when you are in a small region which is only just emerging with a handful of local youth teams with some of those teams struggling to get enough players for a full side an academy could kill the development of girls football dead in that area. The fifteen or so girls you have in the academy could turn in to great players but after they have gone through their will be no other players coming through as there will be no leagues for them to play in. To improve girls football there has to be access for all.

Instead of taking the easy option of just working with a select group of players if county organisations and professional teams could invest time in setting up good local leagues for girls it will give more players access to football and a lot better in the long term. Having a competitive league of ten teams would see a minimum of seventy girls playing football on a weekly basis which is nearly five times the amount that would be catered for by the academy.

If local youth teams get their best talent cherrypicked by academies then are they going to bother continuing without them? If this is the case what if that player gets let go by the academy half way through the season and she comes back and she has no club to play for? By taking one player from a team could spoil football for many girls. Young people become better players by playing with and against good football players.

So there you go that’s my rant of the week have you guys experienced situations like this where national organisations have passed down rulings which don’t help at local level? We want to know and you can share your views by going to our topic of the week:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=470

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Premiership Football

If you’re from the UK you won’t have been able to escape all the hype and news surrounding the start of the new football season. It’s a time when football fans stop going out with the other half shopping on a Saturday and start staying in to listen to the football scores come in then later either staying in for Match of the Day or recording it whilst they are out.

Every year it seems that the hype surrounding the new season increases and this year was no different as more millions were invested in to and spent by Premier League football teams. For ninety minutes each weekend young men who are played multi millions each year are worshipped liked gods by thousands in the stands and millions watching at home. It’s no surprise then when you ask many young boys what they want to be when they grow up they will same a footballer.

The sport has got even more lucrative this year with more foreign owners with big pockets buying in to clubs in all leagues and now with another broadcaster Setanta Sports trying to break the stranglehold that Sky Sports has on Premiership coverage it means the revenues for clubs is even higher. So now I hear you ask: Why am I talking about this in my weekly Talented Young People Blog? Well here’s why.

This extra revenue and income may be good for the clubs and players finances but it increases the levels of stress and pressure put on teams who in the main consist of a high number of young talented players to achieve. The more money an owner puts in to a club the better results they want and the more they pay you as a player the better performances they want.

With the season merely three games old every game is already being held under close scrutiny by the fans, the press and the clubs with any defeat seen as a reason to sell or let go a player or a manager. This is a tough enough situation for the older experienced players to handle but for a fresh faced sixteen year old making their debut this year it’s a different story. No longer does being good count the only thing that counts is the result and based on that no matter how good your performance is it could spell trouble.

It’s not just on the TV stage that talented young footballers are affected. The lure of the money and celebrity lifestyle has put stars in the eyes of many parents and young children who all dream of that life. This has meant that the competition an the pressure to achieve and be the best has filtered it’s way down through the youth game with some big clubs running academies for players as young as eight.

Now I’m not saying young people shouldn’t have dreams as I believe young people if they have the right motivation and support can achieve anything but I’m saying that I don’t like where this high pressure situation is going. There needs to be more support out there for the ones that don’t make it as lives have been torn apart through the dream factory which is football in this country and more support for those that have made it to deal with the pressure they find themselves under because I do fear that sooner or later the pressure is going to become too much for some people.

To have your say on this week’s blog and young Premiership Footballers join in our topic of the week by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=149

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com/