Earlier this year, a professional club put a post on its social media inviting applications from young girls to trial for a place at that club's youth academy for the 2023/24 season.
For just one age group, the club received more than 2,000 applications. At the end of the trial process, the club had rejected more than 99.5% of those applications.
You would be right to conclude that each of the girls the club signed to its academy is highly talented. And you might therefore believe, that barring unforseeable circumstances, each of those players will be developed within that club's academy for at least a few years. Unfortunately, history demonstrates that such a belief will be wrong.
Year after year, it is common for professional clubs to release from their youth academies a large percentage of the players they have previously assessed as being talented enough to gain entry into those academies and to represent those clubs as registered and/or contracted players.
What is so wrong with the way youth academies operate which results in that pattern continuing year after year?
The answer to that question is complex to say the least, and beyond the scope of this blog to address.
However, there is one key factor that comes into play at youth academies when evaluating the average length of time a player spends in that environment, and it is this: What appears to outsiders as the club 'getting things wrong' with player selection is sometimes not that at all. Sometimes, it is by design.
In the cut-throat world of youth football development at the top level, one of the harsh realities is there are players clubs believe are the 'salmon', and there are players clubs believe are the 'trout'.
The clubs bet on the salmon, not the trout. While the salmon and trout swim together at the academy, and while it will not often be easy for people outside the club to see the difference between the salmon and the trout, the club configures its training so the role of the trout is to facilitate the advancement (and the value to the club) of the salmon. When the trout have fulfilled that role, they are effectively thrown back into the sea of players not at the club. The trout didn't know, at the time they joined the club, that that would be the outcome for the trout, but the club knew that outcome was as close to inevitable for the trout as anything is capable of being.
Young players (and their parents) who understand the salmon and trout development model are far better placed to make informed decisions about their future and at every step of their development process.