Why children don’t need to be in professional football clubs from a young age
We’ve lost count of the number of parents who are sold on this idea that young kids need to be in academies at 5-7 years olds to stand any chance of ‘making it’.
We’ve had kids as young as 4 being being taken to pro-clubs 
Often times it is well-meaning.
Parents trying to give their child the best possible opportunities (although we meet a lot of those who are chasing the dream on their child’s behalf 
)
After-all, what could be bad about some extra football and some (hopefully) good coaching?
Well, research suggests that the longer kids are away from these sorts of things, the better their chances are.
[Swipe for the research]
We work with a player who we think could go all the way.
He’s almost 14 and joined a Premier League academy at 10 years old.
Guess how many of the kids who were there from 5 years old are still there now?
ZERO 
Our very own Luke Lyons was at Leeds and played professionally in Scotland.
Guess how old he was when he joined an academy?
12 years old.
See, there is a lot to be said for playing grassroots or street football.
It builds a toughness & resilience, can help with creativity and, above all else, it can be more enjoyable than the cut-throat world of academy football.
There will always be exceptions to the rule.
But the exceptions are normally those kids we refer to as ‘outliers’.
i.e. they were born with something and were going to make it regardless (think Rashford, Bellingham, Foden etc).
They will make it whether they join a club at 5 or 15.
But there aren’t many of those around.
Is your child very good or are they an outlier?
The way to assess that is to ask yourself does it look like border-line bullying when your child is playing against other kids?
Are they so good that someone who knows nothing about football could spot that your child has something others don’t?
If ‘no’ to the above but they’re very good, don’t worry too much about chasing that dream too early…
You might be giving them the best possible opportunity by holding off for a while.
