New U18 & U21 Reserve Leagues Bring Major Change

[White Noise]

http://www.englandfootballblog.com/2012/06/05/new-reserve-league-u18-u21/


New U18 & U21 Reserve Leagues Bring Major Change


June 5, 2012


The Premier League is set to breathe fresh air into the world of Reserve Team football by launching National U21 and National U18 leagues. The aim is to ensure young players (hopefully primarily English) are actually playing football...not rotting away somewhere on a bench.



English Youth Football Changes


The U21 Premier League Reserve League will take place at weekends.

Premier League Reserve League matches will take place between Friday-Monday, therefore allowing bench players the opportunity to play "high quality" football.

The aim is to launch Premier League Reserve League in time for the 2013/2014 season.

There will be a limit on the number of overage players allowed to be fielded.

Both U18s and U21s football will become national programmes under the new system.

Training programmes will be aligned from the first team down through U21s and in turn down to the U18s.

The new U18s League will force the abolishment of the Premier Academy League.

More top English clubs will also be participating in the NextGen Football Series in 2012/2013.

The U21 League will mandate at least two home games be played in the parent club's home stadium.

The rule of three U19s being allowed to play in youth fixtures goes away.



In addition to the launch U21 Premier League Reserve League, football's EPPP will start to see the light of day. Starting next season, English academies will morph into a four-tier system (Category One through Category Four). Each club will have their youth setup assessed and placed into these aforementioned categories. Following on from whatever categorisation a club receives, their respective U18 setup will play inter-league against other 'Category X' clubs.

The hope is to provide regular football for the likes of Josh McEachran, Ross Barkley, Raheem Sterling, etc. at U21 level, while those at U18 level will attempt to 'play the best'.

Just take what Gerard Houllier said, a man who is strongly advocating for change in English youth football:


"In England you lose a lot of players between 18 and 21. The two countries who are failing are England and Italy. I knew one or two players at Aston Villa who did not have enough games to play at the top level. Between 18 and 20 there is nothing. In France when they don't play on a Saturday, they can play for the reserves the next day."

[FC Silver Fox]

In France, and in a number of other European countries I believe, reserve teams can play in the main national leagues. There has to be at least 2 divisions between the 1st and reserve teams so that there is no possibility of them playing each other (promotion/relagation).The reserve team being in the league is different to U21 and U18 leagues.
Not sure how this new English initiative is going to pan out.  What happens to the U21 and U18 players who play in the reserves? Which league will have the most prestige?

[MJG]

I still don't understand why the grounds are not used more on match days.
You could have a game before or even after a prem game. Be it reserves, youth or women. Ko at noon and the game is over by two. Gives the full hour warmup clubs want pre a three o'clock ko.

[elgreenio]

clubs just negotiating the amount of permitted overage players in a squad (injury recoveries etc) from what I gather.

The more important part of that article about the EPPP though is coming up. Believe only Swansea, QPR and Wigan are the only 3 prem teams not going for cat1 status, though the proof is in the pudding because the majority of teams would need to invest in their current training grounds (City and United have at least put planning forward, as have Stoke with a £6m investment). Chelsea and Blackburn are probably the only guarantees for it, their facilities are on another level especially Chelsea's.

There's a good bit about it from Ipswich's chief exec here regarding things like staffing levels and how they can be mugged off with different titles and a lot of clubs are to be filling them with yearly internships : http://www.twtd.co.uk/news.php?storyid=20347

Clubs apparently set to find out by the end of the month what category they'll be rated once the independant Belgian company have done their assessments.

[Mr_Moon]

The EPPP is going to destroy English football. We're going to see academies such as Crewe and Watford have their players be cherry picked by Premier League side for chicken feed.

Another nail in the coffin.

[elgreenio]

rough guide of how many current players teams have produced : http://downloads.fatdesigns.co.uk/youth/online/

Can't see there being all that much change apart from maybe more from the middle bunch of prem teams.