EDS/B teams in the St Johnstone's Paint Trophy

mrtwiceaseason said:
No it wouldn't city kids at Wembley would attract a few thousand from city two lower league teams the town turns out for the day .
What of the final was stoke kids v Everton kids less than 5000 I bet ?
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I think top PL sides would sway many fans, nonleguers, the curious and the final cup price tickets will be very accessible.
 
Falastur said:
There was a general reorganisation of English youth football about 3 years ago and they introduced categorisation of youth academies. It's all based on stuff like facilities available, number of age groups catered for, quality if things etc. There's 4 categories and every club in the top 4 levels have to be categorised. In turn, the category you are in determines the level of competition your academy now plays at at u18 and u21 level. It also determines to some extent howuch grassroots funding your youth setup gets I believe.
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ColinLee said:
As Falastur says above, to be a Cat 1 academy entails a raft of facilities including education, full time coaches, how many hours a week training they get, sports science, a minimum number of physios etc. All of this costs money and some clubs have decided to downgrade their academies purely due to running costs.

I did see a bit recently online where even if your club passes the audit (done every year I think) for a Class 1 Category academy you won't necessarily get it awarded because you have to be competitive with the other Cat 1 academies and clubs like us and Chelsea have raised the bar by going way over the required minimum levels. I think they likened it to having 5 star facilities but the top of the tree clubs having 6 star academies.
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WOW thanks for the wonderful responses guys. Very interesting stuff. The entire youth development structure of American sports is very different, when they were constructing everything at the and I first saw a video on the clubs YouTube channel detailing the CFA and seeing the facilities I was amazed. What an amazing opportunity for those kids/young men to grow and develop there. Can't imagine being a 14 year old kid and practicing at the same facility as Aguero, Silva, KDB etc. I've always wondered which players on the current squad play the mentor role to the youngins like Ihenacho. I'm sure Vinny is one, Joe as well.

Speaking of the CFA and EDS, now that he's in New York, Vieira is also doing TV for ESPN for the Euros coverage the opening day. Don't know if it was a one time thing or what. I wouldn't think that in the middle of his season he would pick up a side gig. Although, Tim Howard does play in goal on Saturday for Everton and commentate a match on Sunday for NBCSN.
 
NanaToure42 said:
WOW thanks for the wonderful responses guys. Very interesting stuff. The entire youth development structure of American sports is very different, when they were constructing everything at the and I first saw a video on the clubs YouTube channel detailing the CFA and seeing the facilities I was amazed. What an amazing opportunity for those kids/young men to grow and develop there. Can't imagine being a 14 year old kid and practicing at the same facility as Aguero, Silva, KDB etc. I've always wondered which players on the current squad play the mentor role to the youngins like Ihenacho. I'm sure Vinny is one, Joe as well.
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That's the beauty of building the CFA from scratch with everybody on one campus, the 1st team manager can call over one or two of the kids from neighbouring pitches and throw them into training with the 1st team squad (and apparently, frequently do).

Chelsea have just bought the Kingsmeadow ground from AFC Wimbledon and will use it for their U21's & Ladies teams matches, ours of course are all on campus. It's the perfect setup.
 
The latest info I can find on the 16 Prem cat 1 academies is listed below (I have included a couple outside of the prem who had cat 1 up until recently, I would guess that if a prem cat 1 declines (as the dippers are rumoured to be doing) then one of these non prem cat 1's will be invited, but that is only my assumption)

Arsenal
Chelsea
Everton
Hull
Leicester City
Liverpool
Manchester City
Manchester United
Middlesbrough
Norwich City
Southampton
Stoke City
Sunderland
Tottenham
West Bromwich Albion
West Ham United

*********************************
Aston Villa (Non-Prem)
Bolton Wanderers (Non-Prem)
Blackburn Rovers (Non-Prem)
Fulham (Non-Prem)
Reading FC (Non-Prem)
Wolverhampton Wanderers (Non-Prem)
 
mat said:
It begins....

First the PL teams then the sectarians from Scotland chasing the ££££££.
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They can't even get round to joining a UK Olympic team so i'm sure entry into England would not be possible!!!!
 
It will obviously benefit City, but the idea doesn't sit comfortably with me. Feels like just another nail in the coffin for lower league clubs.
 
bobbyowenquiff said:
Seems like a good idea to me. The top clubs in Spain and Germany play their reserve/youth teams in their lower leagues and these nations have a much better track record of developing young talent than we do. In England so many promising young players reach 18 or 19 and just stop dead. They need competitive matches with hardened professionals to prepare them for the Premier League or the Championship. It has got to be good for lower level clubs as well with increased revenue and interest.
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I dont think this idea - in isolation - is a bad idea..... but you have to keep 3 steps ahead of those running the game and question their motives for seeking change..... as with everything they are testing the water for the next step.... be it Game 39 abroad or EDS teams in the lower leagues or whatever else they have up their sleeve to increase revenue. they dont care if Barnet go under if they get more revenue by Spurs reserves taking Barnet's place
 
It'd be nice if someone produced a documentary style piece about the CFA like NBC did for the Southampton youth program.

This is a pretty interesting watch. Warning it is pretty long though.

 
Sounds interesting.
Presumably we would be playing teams such as Bolton / Bury / Rochdale / Oldham in the group stages?
I imagine it would generate a lot of interest for us fans wanting to go to the away ties.
And if we did play at home where would it be played? At the etihad or the academy ground?
 
Mad Eyed Screamer said:
I dont think this idea - in isolation - is a bad idea..... but you have to keep 3 steps ahead of those running the game and question their motives for seeking change..... as with everything they are testing the water for the next step.... be it Game 39 abroad or EDS teams in the lower leagues or whatever else they have up their sleeve to increase revenue. they dont care if Barnet go under if they get more revenue by Spurs reserves taking Barnet's place
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I think part of the problem with the english system is we have to many clubs who try and run as profesional teams. You have many clubs right down in the conference leagues (tier 5 and 6 and below) who are paying decent salarys and charging £10+ for tickets for what is quite a poor standard. No small club wants to go under or step down from their 'level' but if you have well over 50 profesional clubs outside tier 1 and 2 then you will always have clubs financially on their arse. Its quality spread to thin and that affects the standard of football.

Highly controversial but if you scrapped Pro clubs outside the league structure i.e. tier 1 - 4 profesional and had B teams in tier 4. Everything else non pro. I think the standard of football would improve signifciantly. Never going to happen though as it would be like asking Turkeys to vote for Christmas.
 
well I'm all for what's best for City over what's best for the others, and seeing as clubs like Oldham wouldn't take Rusnak and start him properly then they can make do with the alternative which is our kids coming in to play against them. They've had their chance, used to laugh when we were at their level, now they have to play our kids.
 
Gaudion M said:
I think part of the problem with the english system is we have to many clubs who try and run as profesional teams. You have many clubs right down in the conference leagues (tier 5 and 6 and below) who are paying decent salarys and charging £10+ for tickets for what is quite a poor standard. No small club wants to go under or step down from their 'level' but if you have well over 50 profesional clubs outside tier 1 and 2 then you will always have clubs financially on their arse. Its quality spread to thin and that affects the standard of football.

Highly controversial but if you scrapped Pro clubs outside the league structure i.e. tier 1 - 4 profesional and had B teams in tier 4. Everything else non pro. I think the standard of football would improve signifciantly. Never going to happen though as it would be like asking Turkeys to vote for Christmas.
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I'm not sure I get your logic. What exactly are you arguing is being spread too thinly? The footballing talent? I couldn't believe that - player movement is very frequent no matter where in the league system you look and a player will always look to go up the leagues if they believe they're good enough. The money? There's already far more people attending lower PL level teams and Championship games than teams at a similar level in just about any other country in the world, and the Championship has more cash in it than many top flight leagues. If your plan is to force all those clubs to go semi-pro just in order to persuade fans to abandon those games and concentrate on the top then you're going to destroy English football for very little material gain as the money is there already.

The only thing I can see this altering would be to force the best talents at youth level into the academies of the best teams from an earlier age, but honestly that is happening already without this, and besides, if all the cautionary tales of English youth development tell you one thing it's that we're exceedingly good at discounting the best players from an early age and only realising their potential quite late on.
 
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