Empowering the Future: A Look Inside the New Girls’ Football Academy System
Jessica Lee
By winning the European Championships in 2022, the England Women’s Football Team inspired thousands of girls across the nation to take up the sport. With such an influx of female players wanting to pursue a career in football, The FA felt it necessary to remodel the academy set up to ‘provide greater access’ and ‘diversify the talent pool.’
In 2022, the Regional Talent Club (RTC) and Advanced Coaching Centre (ACC) systems were deemed inaccessible with the limited number of centres spread nationwide. This reduced the amount of talent entering the player pathway as only a certain number of girls could be selected to participate.
Therefore, The FA introduced over 70 Emerging Talent Centres (ETCs) ensuring that 95% of players would live within an hour of a centre. Each centre aims to have a minimum of 60 participants across all programmes, increasing young player engagement to over 4200 (a 187% increase in two years).
The ETCs act as an entry point for talented players on the pathway to becoming professional. They target ages 8-16, giving them an increased amount of playing time and varying their playing formats. By this, it enables girls to play at an ETC as well as contribute to a grassroots or school team as well as many other set ups.
560 staff have been hired across the country to deliver 1.5 hours of technical training per week for 30 weeks. This includes age-appropriate strength and conditioning as well as one game every six weeks. There is a huge focus on physical literacy, building girls’ confidence in a wide variety of physical activities in multiple environments. This encourages healthy development and is important for the overall well-being of the players, as it allows for them to examine their own movements and improve their performance.
The centres are funded by The FA and the Premier League. After pledging to invest £21 million into women and girls’ football between 2022 and 2025, the Premier League have invested £5.25 million into the ETCs and £10.5 million into girls’ grassroots football. Each player attending an ETC will not be asked to pay more than £120 a season (£4 a session) to keep the system as accessible as possible, with bursaries available for low-income families.
The original 28 RTCs and ACCs across the country were disbanded and replaced by ‘Professional Game Academies’ with the focus on developing players for senior football. Teams in the Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship can set up their own PGA and target a slightly older age group of between 8 and 20 year olds. They are also funded by The FA as well as the club itself. Club funded programmes can develop their youth programme to fit with the philosophy of the team and do not have to follow the certain regulations that ETCs must.
With these investments, the range of talent to be identified nationwide has been increased exponentially. Following on from the successful introduction of the Discover MyTalent Programme, created by The FA for talented players to be referred to and be given insights on nationally, ETCs give the chance for them to be scouted in-person. Over 320 players have already been identified and placed on the revamped player pathway heading towards national football.
However, with all the success that has happened with the introduction of ETCs and PGAs, we unfortunately have to say goodbye to Reading FCs Academy due to their ongoing ownership problems.
The club had an amazing maiden season with their ETC, and hence expanded their age groups available for the 23/24 season. Four groups from U10 to U13 ran last year, with over 360 girls trialling at their open training session. They were set to offer three age groups again for the upcoming season, yet, with the Reading Women’s first team tumbling to tier five football from the Barclays Championship due to lack of funding, the club are now trying their best to support the girls contracted to the club on their football journey.
As we look to the future of women’s football, it can be said that the academy system will play a pivotal role in the success of female sport. Fuelled by talent, hard-work, dedication from players and coaches, academies enable every girl who dreams of playing football to have an opportunity to turn it into reality.
Sources:
Photo - https://womenscompetitions.thefa.com/en/Article/Girls-Football-Week---For-Adults
https://www.the-sun.com/sport/11720499/reading-estcourt-communication-club-future-womens-team/
https://www.englandfootball.com/england/youth/womens-talent-pathway/Emerging-Talent-Centres
https://www.premierleague.com/news/2686633
https://beyondthepitch.co/reading-women-another-victim-of-the-endless-cycle-of-poor-ownership/
https://www.englandfootball.com/england/youth/womens-talent-pathway