A little over a decade ago, with the nation still digesting the 4-1 thumping to which the England men’s team had been subjected by Germany in the last 16 of the 2010 World Cup, the domestic game’s decision-makers concluded a major shake-up of men’s youth football across the country was needed.
The resulting Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) represented a radical transformation of what was happening at academy level, all with the long-term development of the youngsters involved in mind.
It effectively professionalised academy football, moving away from the old system of having youth and reserve teams and introducing under-18s and under-23s leagues. The latter was changed back to under-21s last season to more accurately reflect the ages of the players involved and, over time, the EPPP has been modified, tweaked and adapted in other ways.
It has been an undoubted success in improving the talent pool available to the England first-team manager and in helping clubs throughout the pyramid. The benefits, it is argued, trickle from the Premier League right down into League Two, the fourth tier of the domestic game.
This year will see another amendment — the latest attempt to improve the chances of young players breaking into senior teams and raise the bar yet higher. As a structural change it is only relatively minor, but the hope is the ramifications could be significant as clubs seek to bridge the gap between under-21s football and the first-team game.
Premier League 2 (PL2) will now consist of one division holding all 25 teams — instead of two divisions, a top tier of 14 and the other of 11, with promotion and relegation between them — with each playing 20 matches, meaning sides who previously competed in Division One will have six fewer regular-season games and it won’t be the traditional case of all clubs in the league playing all the others home and away.
The 25 clubs will be divided into five pots based on a seeding calculated using their performance over the last three years and play all the other sides in their pot plus either four or five teams from the other four pots to reach 20 games. At the conclusion of the regular season, the top 16 teams will progress to a knockout tournament to decide the champions. For the other nine, their year will be over.
Based on how chess tournaments work, it is known as the “Swiss model” and is the same structure that will be introduced in the Champions League from the start of the 2024-25 season.
The hope is that removing promotion and relegation will enhance the games programme and allow players to develop with no threat of dropping into a lower, weaker division if their team’s results are bad. But the big questions are: 1) will these changes make any meaningful difference?, and 2) why have they been introduced?
“I like the new idea,” says an agent who represents players involved in the competition and, like the other sources contacted for this article, spoke to The Athletic under condition of anonymity to protect relationships. “I just wish they played everyone home and away still. But this is a start — they can review it and see how it works.
“I don’t like the fact the lower placed teams’ season curtails so early, though. It should be as realistic as possible compared to the Premier League or EFL seasons.”
That final point is the key in the eyes of many.
The idea is that under-21s football should offer a similar number of games to the minimum 46 guaranteed to clubs in the EFL’s three divisions.
“In a League One season, you play 46 games in the league, but add in cup matches and the lads at that level are playing 50-plus games a season,” says one person working in academy football. “The reality is most of the kids coming through academies are going to be League One or Two players, so they need to be able to play that many games.
“At first glance, we’re taking potentially six guaranteed games away from them — from 26 to 20 — even if competitions such as the Premier League International Cup (for which the top 12 teams qualify and there are three guaranteed fixtures), the Premier League Cup and the EFL Trophy (another three guaranteed fixtures) still top up the number of games.”
The Premier League International Cup sees England’s top 12 academies face 12 development sides from across continental Europe. This exposes youngsters to teams offering a different style of play and who compete in domestic leagues against clubs’ senior teams, offering a greater challenge and more exposure than the current English programme does.
“The objective is to produce players to play in first teams, so how do you do that?,” adds the academy employee. “By playing top-level games, against the elite sides in domestic youth football. But that’s not the make-or-break anymore.
“What’s actually more significant is getting players out on loan or playing in these additional cup competitions, particularly the Premier League International Cup, which are brilliant.
“You don’t sit there and say you’re going to produce more players simply because you’ve got promotion and relegation.”
As detailed above, the top 16 teams in this new-look Premier League 2 will advance to the play-offs, offering those players more games and an element of positive jeopardy. Some might argue scrapping relegation and promotion takes away an incentive and creates a situation that will fail to prepare youngsters for the brutal realities of first-team football, where that pressure is omnipresent. But the consensus at youth level appears to be that withdrawing the risk factor would have minimal impact and that other aspects are more important.
“It’s the sheer volume of games which is impossible to replicate,” says another person who previously worked in a Category Two academy. “Being available to train and play regularly is a real eye-opener. Then it’s the three points and the external factors — the crowd, success. You demagnify it a bit more.
“The biggest thing that needs to be tapped into at the top end of academies is the mentality for young players. It comes down to resources — human and/or financial — that can add these different experiences.”
The same source references Manchester United’s approach to sending young players on loan to near-neighbours Altrincham of the National League, English football’s fifth tier, to gain experience in senior football while still training at their parent club’s academy: “That’s thinking outside the box and utilising a different resource.
“The EFL Trophy has helped as well, because you play against senior players in front of a crowd in senior stadiums. You can get to Wembley in it, and it’s a knockout competition after the group stages.
“The idea of B teams might also resurface in the next couple of years.”
To increase the number of games youngsters get, some clubs at Category Two and Three levels have gone back to the Central League — the old reserves league — which offers around eight more games and also provides a cup competition. “In the EFL the number of double gameweeks is high, so there needs to be some correlation,” says a figure at a club now considering entering the Central League.
More clubs are bringing in older players to act almost as player-coaches for the under-21s, or fielding members of their senior setup alongside their youngsters in an attempt to give them more experience than playing almost exclusively against their own age group. There are also conversations around increasing the number of teams in the EFL Trophy (currently 64: the 48 clubs in Leagues One and Two plus 16 Premier League and Championship academy teams), to provide more matches.
But the question is what purpose does under-21 football serve, and for whom is it designed to be a development league?
The sight of the very best young players almost entirely bypassing the under-21s level has become commonplace — they often make the jump from under-18s straight to the first team, or spend a brief period with their club’s under-21s before being sent out on loan to play first-team football.
The Premier League uses current England internationals Marcus Rashford (under-18s straight to the first team), Mason Mount (loans abroad and in the Championship) and Ollie Watkins (via two clubs in the EFL) as examples of the varying journeys talented youngsters can take to reach elite-level football.
In that context, it would appear that this tweaked version of PL2 will be of most benefit to those just behind the very best.
Some concern has been expressed that teams are no longer guaranteed to face the top Premier League sides — the likes of Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal — potentially reducing the quality of opposition and therefore maybe affecting development. Relegation to Division Two would have had the same effect under the old system, of course.
For all the potential downsides, academy-level managers are overwhelmingly in favour of change, and the vote — which was determined by those on the boards of clubs — reflected as much.
There is a feeling among some in academy football that the B-team model used in continental Europe would be the most beneficial way to develop players, with clubs entering such teams into the EFL to play a full league season against other clubs’ senior sides, but it is accepted that the culture and history of English football would make this challenging, potentially impossible, to implement. The multi-club-stable model is also seen as useful for keeping the maximum amount of control over players’ development while out on loan, but there is an appreciation this avenue may face stronger regulation in the future.
Therefore it is the existing competitions where youngsters play corresponding sides from other nations and clubs’ senior teams, experiencing different styles of football and being exposed to teams speaking different languages, which are almost a compromise.
Anything that diversifies players’ experiences seems to be viewed positively.
The sense persists that the best ways to bridge the gap remain loans targeted to the needs of the individual player, games against senior teams in competitions such as the EFL Trophy, and more matches against higher-quality opposition, through the Premier League International Cup or the Premier League Cup.
These tweaks to the structure of PL2, then, are effectively tinkering around the edges.
Yet the feeling is that they will help, with the changes welcomed as those working in youth football strive to prepare the next generation of talent most effectively.
