Youth football expert wants Kinetic Academy to expand into Scottish market

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…

Scottish football is starting to see a resurgence over the past few years and youth football expert Harry Hudson wants to get in on the action.

He founded the Kinetic Academy back in 2011 and ever since it has produced no less than 60 professional football players from its base in South London.

One of the foundation’s most successful graduates is Nigerian international Joe Aribo who shone for Rangers in the Scottish Premiership and scored in the Europa League final last season.

He has now left Ibrox to join Ralph Hasenhuttl at Southampton where he made his Premier League debut at the weekend away at Tottenham after a £10million transfer.

Hudson is keen to expand Kinetic’s reach north of the border having sent players to loads of Football League clubs in England already.

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“We’re working hard to try and cover as many of the 72 Football League clubs as possible,” Hudson told The Football Wonderkids. “We had a visit from Hibernian recently who spent a couple of days with us so we are looking to expand the network.

“We want to work with as many clubs as we can because that means we can give as many opportunities as possible to the young people on our programme.

“Clubs tend to reach out to us and we are happy to accommodate them. We don’t have a fancy training ground or office to show them around but Hibs came and watched two of our games, met some of the staff and it was a really good experience.

“The Scottish professional football market is somewhere that we are quite keen to open up as much as we can.”

Jake Tones is the most recent graduate to earn a professional deal, singing for League Two club Sutton United after a successful trial at Gander Green Lane.

In other Kinetic Academy news, Hudson described Tones as an “absolute animal” and gave his thoughts as to whether he could make his senior professional debut this season.