Elite Youth Development
Technical Director Written Report
, Introduction
In 2011, the EPPP was released to “deliver an environment that promotes excellence, nurtures talent
and systematically converts the talent into professional players capable playing first team football
(Premier League, 2011. pg.12). Due to our geographical location and financial budget, I believe the
club should downgrade to a category 4 academy system as this will free more of our budget up to
focus on the recruitment of late developing players, whilst targeting specific players from other
higher category clubs that suit our club culture. This takes away the risk of wasting value resource on
an early specialisation programme for kids at 5 years old who are very unlikely to make it pro.
Becoming a category 4 academy allows the club the freedom to have a very player centred
development programme and use a micro development approach to be able to target each team
and player’s needs. This allows the club to focus the limited resources into players who align with
the overall club’s philosophy and are already closer to fully developed individuals. With a smaller
number of players, it gives coaches the ability to meet the needs of the individuals and the team,
much more closely and by not being able to enter the Premier League 2, It allows the freedom of
picking fixtures to requirements for development.
Club Culture
For all staff and players involved within a club, Mark Nesti and Chris Sulley suggest that the need to
sustain the identity of the club – all members involved need to become immersed in its values,
traditions, history and culture (Mark Nesti & Chris Sulley, 2015. P107.) which is consistently
mentioned within the academy structure. Thus, implying a clear need for a club’s identity as it
creates a sense of vocation amongst all members involved. Creating vocation for all members at the
club leads to a greater level of self-motivation as their job becomes their life’s passion. Nesti & Sulley
continue to State that these individuals bring a level of commitment and motivation to their roles
that is beyond what is reasonable to expect meaning they are fully immersed to how to improve
things (Mark Nesti & Chris Sulley, 2015. p107). Members of the club with this drive and need to
improvement are the backbone of a successful club, where all involved are driven and passionate to
turn the club into the best it can be. Additionally, within Larsen’s work he lists important factors for
creating a strong environment for talent development. He found that a strong and coherent
organisational culture and a governing principle in the culture was a strong family feeling (Carsten H.
Larsen, 2013) made a successful environment for developing talent. It is vitally important to create a
string club culture as strong relationships between members of the team is regarded as highly
important for success. Bruner, Munroe-chandler, and spink (2008) conducted a similar qualitative
study to Larsen with 17-year-old ice hockey players. They found that >60% of their comments were
related to performance issues, and that 20% of this was either emphasising support to teammates or
the personal development and maturation within the game. Larsen finishes his important factors
with an environment that was based on cooperation, openness, and sharing knowledge Carsten H.
Larsen, (2013) which is incredibly similar to the findings of Martingdale. They highlighted similar
factors which create a successful environment including a clarity and consistency of philosophy,
objectives, and methods, which includes that aims and methods must be long term and coherent
(Martindale et al., 2005). By creating a strong club culture, with such a small number of players
involved it will be able to filter down from first team down the under 18’s. Within these teams, the
players will develop stronger relationships and therefore be able to perform better as a team as
proven by Bruner, Munroe-Cohen, and Spink.
Technical Director Written Report
, Introduction
In 2011, the EPPP was released to “deliver an environment that promotes excellence, nurtures talent
and systematically converts the talent into professional players capable playing first team football
(Premier League, 2011. pg.12). Due to our geographical location and financial budget, I believe the
club should downgrade to a category 4 academy system as this will free more of our budget up to
focus on the recruitment of late developing players, whilst targeting specific players from other
higher category clubs that suit our club culture. This takes away the risk of wasting value resource on
an early specialisation programme for kids at 5 years old who are very unlikely to make it pro.
Becoming a category 4 academy allows the club the freedom to have a very player centred
development programme and use a micro development approach to be able to target each team
and player’s needs. This allows the club to focus the limited resources into players who align with
the overall club’s philosophy and are already closer to fully developed individuals. With a smaller
number of players, it gives coaches the ability to meet the needs of the individuals and the team,
much more closely and by not being able to enter the Premier League 2, It allows the freedom of
picking fixtures to requirements for development.
Club Culture
For all staff and players involved within a club, Mark Nesti and Chris Sulley suggest that the need to
sustain the identity of the club – all members involved need to become immersed in its values,
traditions, history and culture (Mark Nesti & Chris Sulley, 2015. P107.) which is consistently
mentioned within the academy structure. Thus, implying a clear need for a club’s identity as it
creates a sense of vocation amongst all members involved. Creating vocation for all members at the
club leads to a greater level of self-motivation as their job becomes their life’s passion. Nesti & Sulley
continue to State that these individuals bring a level of commitment and motivation to their roles
that is beyond what is reasonable to expect meaning they are fully immersed to how to improve
things (Mark Nesti & Chris Sulley, 2015. p107). Members of the club with this drive and need to
improvement are the backbone of a successful club, where all involved are driven and passionate to
turn the club into the best it can be. Additionally, within Larsen’s work he lists important factors for
creating a strong environment for talent development. He found that a strong and coherent
organisational culture and a governing principle in the culture was a strong family feeling (Carsten H.
Larsen, 2013) made a successful environment for developing talent. It is vitally important to create a
string club culture as strong relationships between members of the team is regarded as highly
important for success. Bruner, Munroe-chandler, and spink (2008) conducted a similar qualitative
study to Larsen with 17-year-old ice hockey players. They found that >60% of their comments were
related to performance issues, and that 20% of this was either emphasising support to teammates or
the personal development and maturation within the game. Larsen finishes his important factors
with an environment that was based on cooperation, openness, and sharing knowledge Carsten H.
Larsen, (2013) which is incredibly similar to the findings of Martingdale. They highlighted similar
factors which create a successful environment including a clarity and consistency of philosophy,
objectives, and methods, which includes that aims and methods must be long term and coherent
(Martindale et al., 2005). By creating a strong club culture, with such a small number of players
involved it will be able to filter down from first team down the under 18’s. Within these teams, the
players will develop stronger relationships and therefore be able to perform better as a team as
proven by Bruner, Munroe-Cohen, and Spink.
