Dr Chris Platts
These claims do little to advance our understanding of this topic and, therefore, are of little use for players who are trying to prepare for their careers or the parents and guardians supporting them
“How many young players undertaking a scholarship ‘make it’ to the professional level?” This is an important topic because, in my view, it is one area shrouded in misinformation. Most prominent among this misinformation is the claim Michael Calvin made in 2017 that:
“Only 180 of the 1.5 million boys who play organized youth football in England will become a Premier League pro. That’s a success rate of 0.012 percent”.
These claims do little to advance our understanding of this topic and, therefore, are of little use for players who are trying to prepare for their careers or the parents and guardians supporting them.
Let me explain the problem with this analysis. First, it assumes the aim of every young boy playing organized youth football in England is to become a professional footballer in the Premier League. It is akin to arguing that everybody starting to play the guitar when they are young wants to become a professional musician. They don’t, many do it for fun. Second, perhaps more importantly, there are only a certain number of players who can be employed as a footballer in the Premier League. 20 squads of 25 players means the number who can realistically be employed as a player in the Premier League is around 500 each season. What would be a perfect success rate given these numbers? Even if a new 500 players entered the professional ranks each year that would be a success rate of 0.033% and would leave the previous 500 players out of a club. Third, only measuring those who play in the Premier League disregards those who are employed in other leagues or abroad for example. Finally, it takes a very simple view of what it means to ‘make it’. So, let us move on to a more detailed look at this, to unearth some of the answers in a more detailed way.
Did I make it?
The first thing, therefore, that needs discussing is what it means to make it. For example, if a player gets a professional contract at the age of 18, never plays a first-team game, and then is released at 20, did they ‘make it’? Likewise, if someone has a career of four years, did they make it? How long do you have to be a professional player before you are considered to have ‘made it’? What about someone who gets two professional contracts between the ages of 18 and 24, however, they fail to register for a first-team appearance and then move to semi-professional football?
In short, ‘making it’ is a difficult thing to define, it is subjective. It is something that should be defined by the players and not by anyone else. Setting out what they hope to achieve in realistic terms with ‘stretch’ goals and then reviewing them is a good way of keeping them from being drawn into the false narrative around ‘making it’. Statistics will not define whether a player is happy with their career.
Now we can disregard the concept of who ‘made it’ and who didn’t, we can look closer at the data. This data is generated from 299 players who completed a scholarship between the ages of 16 and 18. From that point, their careers have been tracked up to the age of 26. The result is a set of longitudinal data charting what happens to one cohort of players over the first 8 years of their careers.
The first point to address is how many scholars got a professional contract at 18. The answer to that is 56%. But there is a caveat to add here. There is no way of knowing the contracts that those players were given. That is to say, at some clubs, players will have been given contracts but not ones that allow them to be full-time players in the traditional sense of the word. But we do know that 56% of players will have been given something in the game.
That means that for 44% of players who had a scholarship, the age of 18 is the end of their road in professional football. It is very unlikely that anyone from this group (those who were unable to gain a contract at 18) make it back to the game. Only one player from the 299 managed that.
Data from https://www.chrisplatts.co.uk
Eight years later
The drop-off over the next eight years is not as sharp as one might expect. Indeed, by the age of 26, 42% of the original 299 players were still playing in the game at some level. So ‘only’ 12% of players had left the game. However, a really important point to take away is that the general trajectory of the careers of those who remained in the game was down. By the time they were 26 a larger proportion of the players who gained a contract at the age of 18 were at clubs where it is unlikely they will be full-time players. To give another perspective on this trend, these data shed light on the direction of the player’s careers. For example, in the first eight years of their career, 5% of the players who got a contract at 18 were able to move up the football pyramid. Another 5% of the players were able to stay in the same division, however, 58% of players moved down the football pyramid. That is to say, 90% of players who were awarded a contract at the age of 18, were leaving the game or moving down the football pyramid over the next eight years.
There are several take-home points from this data that need to be baked into the support players receive:
- Define ‘making it’ on your terms
- Getting a contract is the start of your career, not the end point of your scholarship
- Be prepared to move down the football pyramid and this can be viewed as ‘progressing’
