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Youth football expert reasons why academy players struggle to play for top teams
We’re delighted to welcome the founder of Kinetic Academy Harry Hudson as our exclusive columnist. Each week the youth football expert will be giving his views on the biggest talking points on wonderkids across the UK…
Breaking into senior football from youth football is one of the biggest hurdles for academy players and there is an obvious reason why.
Kinetic Academy founder Harry Hudson knows that as well as anyone having seen many players miss out on their first try in the professional game but get their second chance.
From Kinetic, 62 players have gone on to earn professional contracts but Hudson knows that the chances are much smaller at the biggest clubs in the country due to the quality of the senior players.
“I’d imagine that they could get those players back if they wanted to,” Hudson said exclusively to The Football Wonderkids. “You could debate why they didn’t just loan them out rather than selling them but we don’t know the strategy behind it.
“City are aware of the talent they have and Chelsea have their loan system that players go through but it’s very, very difficult to play young players when you’ve got a star-studded squad of 18 players that are on big money and have proven it.
“Expectations on the biggest teams in England are so high, Chelsea have recently brought through Reece James, Mason Mount, Trevor Chalobah and even Fikayo Tomori but that happened because it was forced.
“They had to do that because they couldn’t buy players so if you turned around to City tomorrow and said ‘You can’t sign any players for three years, you’ve got to use what you’ve got in house’ it would surprise people how good these players can become.”
In other Kinetic Academy news, Hudson had high praise for Southampton head of recruitment Joe Shields after an epic summer of transfers.