FA Pushing to Halve Number of Non-EU Premier League Players By 2015

in Germany school kids have half a day of lessons (finishing at around 1pm) and are encouraged to take part in half a day of sport (or other extra-curricula activities) - most kids do take part cos parents sign them up so they dont have to pay for daycare.

Get professional sport coaches into school, and make it compulsory for kids to do 6 hours of extra-curricular activities a week and you'd sort out a **** load of problems with one stone.

" The cost to the UK economy of overweight and obesity was estimated at £15.8 billion per year " - invest 5 billion into getting kids healthy and they'd save way more than that in the long term

 

The issue with kids is just that - they are kids. They are picked up at 5 years old (my friends son was scouted for Boro recently at that age) and he has to go 2 evenings per week 7-8 and 1 evening per week 6-8 (Friday). His bed time is 7pm and has been since he was old enough to say Dada! The bairn is shattered and losing heart with football as he's not interested in some of the training they put him through. He just wants to play football and he's not able to do this. Kids are not able to - academies take on thousands of kids and less than 5% of them get to make it to professional level. If they invest in some good grass roots coaching and make it illegal for clubs to pick them up until 11 or 12 when they have more ideas about them and will be able to apply themselves then a lot more would be successful and a lot more English people would play football. My son was scouted for Newcastle at 7 years old - he turned up for training and was given a diet sheet which meant he had only to eat what was on there. I couldn't afford most of the stuff so he had to quit at 8 years old. Crazy way of doing things with kids of that age. Let them develop a little more before trying to turn them into Messi!

 

Jeez Terry, that's such a sad indictment on our country. I'm sure things aren't as bad as you think.

Down where I live, the local football, cricket and rugby clubs are so well organised and there's hundreds of kids turning up week-in week-out playing regular competitive games and receiving great training from well qualified coaches.

Some of the kids at the local rugby club at Biggleswade have gone on to professional level, and Bedford is known for producing great young players.

It's too easy to write off kids these days and be pessimistic about how life, society, etc is going.

There's some good young talent coming through English football, The Saints are doing there bit at their academy, we've produced Hendo and Colback and there are other clubs out there doing the same. But they've got to be given the chance at club level. There was some stat shown on here recently that said there were only 70 English players in the PL in 12/13 or 13/14, can't remember which. That's barely 3 or 4 squads. That's ****ing ridiculous! They've got to be given that chance to develop at a high level.

I'm no happy clapper and if anything the FA can do to improve England's national team then I'm all for it. This may or may not be the answer, but at least they're trying at last!

 

it was a bit depressing actually having re-read it, sorry mate, it was more of a rant than an educated perception!

I just have the impression that many youths aren't given the same opportunities nowadays due to having to facilitate diversities and equality issues. It's all a load of crap to me, the cream should always rise to the top, but in my day kids everywhere on every street had a ball between them, nowadays all you hear about is Youths wanting the next iphone and they're prepared to gut somebody for their pension in broad daylight just so they can play angry birds on their phone.

Maybe I'm just too encased in what's wrong and not paying attention to things that are thriving.

 

10-15million, non eu, nee more ****e like altidore...

let's gets more eu players in, like,,eerr?

loads of knackers from le' harve and your'anus (sure that;s in frog land).

 

Great post mate. They're getting kids far too young. Developing them by the fa, with reasonable measures and practices in place to suit the kids and to educate them on making the right choices and prioritising their studies. A filtration system in place to streamline best and not prolonging false hope. Those who are good enough, form a pool at sixteen, national trials with club invites, then the clubs can then take the kids on. The FA need to take it by the scruff of it's neck.

They want better English players then they need to develop some and not rely on clubs to do it. A club's priority is profit and success, they don't care what nationality the latest talented youngster is so long as they're good enough.