No more U8 academy football? A look at foundation phase football across Europe
On this blog I will share my thoughts about strategy, talent development, scouting and more in football.
A lot of buzz has been going on Twitter by Bayern Munich announcing the closure of their U9s and U10s by 2022/23. Instead the club will run 4 development centres across Munich, offering once a week talent trainings on top of the training the children receive at their local club. Bayern will then start their academy age groups at U11 — a possible reason for this decision might also be that players from other academies cost fees from U12 onwards.
TSF 1899 Hoffenheim has been doing this for many years starting their academy age group at U12 and running a so called “Children Perspective Team” from U8s onwards. Next to club training the children will train once a week free of cost at the academy training ground and compete at some selected tournaments across the year. For the past years VfB Stuttgart has started their academy age group at U11 and cooperated with a local soccer school for their U8-U11 training. Children here are also selected for once a week talent training but pay for this and do not wear the club kit.
There are numerous issues with academy football at such a young age. Issues of early specialisation have been widely discussed and also been noted as a reason by Bayern. Anyone who has coached in these academy age groups knows that pressure is present, even if one as a coach aims to minimize it. Children want to win their games and so do some parents. I have seen scenes where the support looks more like an ultra block with chants and drums — at an indoor tournament with 8 year olds.
Another key issue is time management: driving 50km to training 3 times a week and spending the whole weekends on tournaments hours away from home is the reality in academy football in these age groups — time that these children could use to try things out for themselves, simply have fun and play with friends. Something essential for their long-term development, certainly not only football-wise!
We also know that most of the players that are selected early will sooner than later be de-selected and that populations of early selected players are mostly disparate to populations, who later on manage to have a professional career in the game. The rate of de-selection is consistent no matter the age of entry (U10, U13, U16), after 3 years less than 50% of the initial group of players are left, after 5 years less than 30%.
Some may argue that the quality of training, coaches and competition is higher at an academy. Players will develop better and faster than the rest. Possibly, but it is still not in the best interest of the child how things are run right now. Many players from outside of the system will surpass them in ability at some point as we simply can’t predict performance and potential accurately at such young age. Others might fear that their competition will sign the top talents if they don’t have a team themselves. Especially in high density areas like West Germany or North England where there is a professional academy at each doorstep. A push from clubs towards a centralized FA solution might be the ideal option.
Having a look at English foundation phase football offers a more extreme picture. A professionalised industry with full-time jobs even outside the Premier League clubs, something unthinkable here in Germany, even at the top clubs. Elite U5 teams, trials for U4s or the more regular image of U7s or U8s driving hours across the country for game days.
In Spain foundation phase academy teams are also the norm at most clubs. An example of the bizarre, even with slightly older children, is the LaLiga Promises U12 tournament being nationally televised with a crowd in the thousands and player pitchside interviews.
There are however some very positive examples — Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad, offer an outlook which I experienced during my visits there that could be an example for the future. Athletic start at U10 with 3–4 teams per age group but the real interesting bit is their investment in the Basque region, which Real Sociedad also do to some extent. Athletic has full-time coaches for each region with the goal of improving the level of football at every club. The coaches will lead and assist sessions, offer coach education, lead talent trainings and generally be a support for all clubs inside their region for all kind of sporting related questions. Obviously this is part of Athletics identity and they are re-investing millions into their local football. This is certainly something that is possible for many other academies to some extent also.
In my next article I will look at the academy cooperation club system at SC Freiburg which further provides an outlook on how such relations with clubs could be built and supported. Will post it on my Twitter.