3% of those at the absolute elite academies in football make a premier League appearance.
Young fellas think they have made it when they get to these academies, and in reality they are miles off
Staggering stats. 97% of former cat 1 academy players now aged 21 to 26 never made an EPL appearance.
70% werenât handed a pro contract at an EPL or EFL club. And only 1 in 10 went on to make more than 20 league appearances in the top four tiers of English football.
Not a great business model
This is the most damning stat:
And only 1 in 10 went on to make more than 20 league appearances in the top four tiers of English football
A lot of them must just throw their hat at it after the experience of going through the academies.
Itâs also why youâve to laugh when you see fat Dave in the Rathoat Inn shouting that such and such a player is absolutely shit.
it also shows how good the lads who go over from the LOI and play at any reasonable level over there are.
Brentford binned off their academy, waste of time and money they reckoned
theyâve reopened it. Premier league brought in a rule that all clubs must have an academy by 24/25
A fella involved told me one time that if thereâs 18 lads in a squad at say u14, they are hoping thereâs maybe one lad has a chance of making it. The rest of them are only there to give that lad a team to develop in.
Thatâs borne out by the stats above. Bascially means you were deliberately wasting the lives of 17 young fellas who never have a chance.
Cruel sport.
Be better off staying with an LOI academy, now that they are at a reasonable level. Seems to be a better pathway, with the fall back of LOI football for some
very few lads even play again. When youâve been told you arenât good enough 6 or 7 times whereâs the motivation to tog out at a lower level?
If you think of the 92 clubs that make up the top 4 tiers. And say they each have 18 players (probably low) at each age group. Thatâs 1,656 players each year.
The internet says there are 167 English players in the EPL this year in total.
The numbers donât number
Thatâs before non league, private academies, schools etc etc etc
what years does your report span? how many of that 167 came from before the report?
4109 players were in the report so 410 went on to play more than 20 games. 1230 went on to get professional contracts. Thatâs actually not bad. Itâs amazing how these things can be presented to make it seem worse than it is
seems the big gap is the 800 odd who got contracts and never went on to play more than 20 games at any level.
They badly need that enforcer
Young lad just back from trip to London with his u10 soccer team. Played QPR academy team out at their training centre near Heathrow. Got well beaten over 4 x 20 min games. Most of our lads play GAA and we thought physicality might help like it does in some of the games here. Not so. QPR lads were skilful, fast and very strong. No qualms dunting a lad in the back, pulling him back or steaming in late to slow down the breakaway. Their touch and skill was off the charts too. We got a mini tour of the academy after. They had this flip chart in the coaches office that listed their players (c15) as Essential, Desirable and Non-Desirables. Only one lad on the Essential list, 2 on the desirable list, the rest on the last list 
Main objective of the academy is to sell on best players to help with FFP. Their big achievement of 2020 on the wall was selling some academy lad for ÂŁ17m.
any sign of Sinclair?
Did you meet the Wexford man?
would have been great if he met the team, he comes across very well
No but he sorted the intro for the club to get to play them.
