Many young footballers in the UK begin playing football at a local club. It is at these clubs that they can be identified as having a high level of talent and may be invited to have a trial at a centre of excellence or academy. Some professional clubs will also hold development centres in some areas, these act as the bridge between club football and academy/centre of excellence football. The majority of the professional footballs clubs in the UK have scouts located in their clubs catchment areas.
Those identified by professional clubs as being talented are invited to have a trial, which lasts a period of 6 weeks, those who do well will be offered a one year contract, those who struggle will continue to work at the respective clubs development centre. Some clubs in the country hold open trials, this is seen more in the lower leagues, Peterborough united for example have held open trials over the years. Role of Centre of Excellences and Academy’s In the UK there are currently 39 academies, including 20 from the premiership and another 19 from clubs in the lower leagues.
There are certain criteria (can be found in the appendix) that have to be met for a youth system to be constituted as an Academy, usually financial criteria and also quality of facilities. The academies and COE’s are essential in the development of young footballing talent in the UK; they provide the players with a high level of coaching, medical care and education (For the scholars). Academies and COE’S are the main routes that clubs use to get their young talent into reserve team football and later,1st team football. The FA has a set fixture list for academies and centre of excellences, COE’s play other COE’s, and academies do the same.
There is no league for U9 to U16 teams however the FA run a youth league for youth team academies (U18’s) The role of the ESFA The ESFA has been delivering inter school and representative competition for 100 years. The English schools football association is the recognized governing body for all school football in the United Kingdom. Its role is to develop school football opportunities at both a primary and secondary school level. It does this by setting up competitions that run from U11 level to u19 level. Through these competitions players can move on to higher levels, e. g. district and country representative teams. Disability Football
The FA has made football accessible to people with the following levels of disability: Blind, Partially-Sighted, Deaf and Hearing Impaired (men and women’s teams), Cerebral Palsy, Learning Disabilities and Amputee football. The FA runs 8 national disability teams to properly accommodate people with disabilities, each team having a full time physiotherapist and a fully trained advisor. The FA has also created a search programme for disability football in the UK, which enables disabled footballers to find their local club.
Women’s Football- A survey in 2008 has found that in the UK 260,000 women play football and some 1.1 Million girls play some sort of football. In the UK there are currently 52 centres of excellences providing coaching and a fixture program for talented girls. There has been a large increase in the level of participation in girls and women’s football over recent years, in 1994 there was 10,400 women and girls who played elite level football to 150,000 today. One concern is that despite the FA’s strife to increase women’s participation in the sport, there is still a huge void when compared to the amount of men who plays the sport, with only 1,360,000 of the 7,000,000 who play the sport being women.