Manchester City were one of the Premier League teams who failed to see value in the reserve league, while this coming season Chelsea, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool will feature in Europe’s NextGen Series. So the Premier League have come up with an alternative of their own in a bid to aim to boost the competitive nature of youth team football in England.
Tomo Taka takes a look at how might the new Under-21s league affect England’s youth football?
The Premier League this week ratified a new Under-21s league to replace the old Reserves league that had been deemed outdated and ineffective for its purpose. The proposals were put forward following modest performances from the England national team in recent campaigns and at the heart of the Elite Player Performance Plan is the projection to improve English football through development at top-flight club level.
Under the plans, youth academies and centres of excellence across the ninety-two professional clubs have been audited and classified into four different categories of quality. This moves away from a two-tier system of academies and centres of excellence. Twenty-three clubs (17 Premier League, 6 Championship) that were awarded Category-One designation will take part in the inaugural Under-21s league this season.
The Category-One clubs, in accordance with category criteria, must spend £1.5m of the club’s own money but will receive £775,000 in supplementary grants. The reasoning is that the best young players will ultimately find themselves at the clubs with the best facilities. Having a nationwide Under-21s league should see the best youth players competing against each other on a weekly basis.
The Reserves League format was restricted to regional or semi-national competition with often discrepancies in levels between the teams and many teams questioned its efficacy in developing talent. Manchester City had stopped putting forward a team in their league and managers over the years have seen placing a ‘B Team’ in lower leagues, akin to what Barcelona and Real Madrid do in Spain, as a more incremental platform for young players.
The nationalised Under-21 league that features the best young players should, in theory, raise the technical standard of players and with two home games having to be played at the club’s home ground, there will be more stature and importance attached to the league by clubs and fans. The hope is that clubs will reconsider sending players on loan to lower-league clubs where players may not gain any playing time and take part in less training due to the volume of games these clubs play. Under-21 games will also be played on weekends so that fringe first-team under-21 players will be exposed to maximum time training with the seniors.
Whilst a majority of the seventy-two Football League clubs accepted the proposal in a vote last October, twenty-two of the seventy-two league clubs however opposed the proposition. These clubs challenged rules that say a Category-One club can come to a lower-league club’s training session and assess a youth product with a view to signing them for a fee of a minimum £3000.
The rule has been put in place to facilitate the best youth-players moving to the top development programs but lower-league clubs affirm that it robs them of their assets. Lower-league clubs believe the Elite Player Performance Plan will serve only to widen the gulf between themselves and the top teams and further impede their ability to negotiate deals for the best youth products.
Chelsea academy manager Neil Bath, who was part of the committee to establish the EPPP, refuted these claims: “Ultimately boys coming out of the system will filter back down into Football League clubs anyway.”
Despite the FA’s plans for St. George’s Park, it has been the Premier League that have charged themselves with the task to develop youth. The new Under-21s league will, despite objections, improve the overall standard of youth football and see youngsters establishing themselves within their team environment rather than out on loan. Could this be the first step in revitalising the national team’s fortunes in competing with the top teams in the world?
images: © Sorren Lissner, © Sorren Lissner
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