So, your daughter plays football, or you’re the coach of a local girls’ team, or you’re a teacher, watching girls kick a ball around in the playground. What do you do if you know or see a standout player, someone that could have a future in football?
The FA has spent three years reviewing the pathway for female players from top to bottom in a bid to make it simple for anyone to recommend the talent they see and to make it as easy as possible for girls, from any background, to be able access the support that will hone their skills.
The new look Women’s and Girls’ Player Pathway also involves up to 70 Emerging Talent Centres (ETCs) being established across the country (replacing the existing 38 Regional Talent Centres and Advanced Coaching Centres), which will be funded by the FA and Premier League. This will, according to the FA, reduce travelling time for 95% of young female players to their nearest centre to less than one hour. The number of staff working in the new ETCs will be approximately 560, compared to the 350 currently working in the RTCs and ACCs, and the aim is to increase the number of young female players involved in the ETCs from 1,722 to more than 4,200 by the end of the 2023-24 season.
In collaboration with clubs in the Women’s Super League and Championship, FA Professional Game Academies will also be established by the 2023-24 season, replacing the current academy system, to aid the development of players aged between 14 and 20 and bridge the gap between youth football and first team club football and senior international football.
But it is the Discover My Talent scheme that offers the chance to tell the FA that someone should be on the radar of the national team setup and clubs. By filling out a form on the FA website, anyone can recommend a player. It is then the job of the individual talent manager in each region to ensure that no one is missed and to educate on what to look for.
The Discover My Talent programme runs within the Performance Pathway, acting as a bridge between grassroots and youth national teams. The FA’s women’s technical director, Kay Cossington, describes it as a “stepping stone” to aid transition from grassroots to podiums, which is a model championed by Sport England that has been adopted by 42 other sports.
With hundreds of thousands of boys playing grassroots football, in the men’s game it is a two-stage process, with the best taken into academies. In the women’s game, the pool of players, the scouting network and the number of teams available are far fewer. However, the Discover My Talent scheme is one of a number of additional stages unique to the women’s game and feeds players into the youth national teams and then some of the best into the Club Pathway. This follows a more traditional route, of players moving up from the grassroots game and Wildcat sessions into the new Professional Game Academies run by clubs. That then provides a club-led route from Under-8s all the way up to competing in the women’s professional game.
Those identified by the Discover My Talent scheme will be able to take part in one of two regional events each year, depending on when they were referred, and from there will be selected to take part in a national event at St George’s Park. That event funnels the most promising players into under-15 National Talent Camp and under-16 and under-17 contention, while allowing them to continue playing in their local communities and clubs.
Of the 3,000-plus referrals in the first year of operating, 320 players have been identified and 74 have reached the national youth longlists. These are players who may not have come into contact with the FA otherwise, existing on the fringes of a pathway that previously only afforded young girls with resources and parental assistance to engage with it.
These changes are a huge step forward in opening up the pathway to the Lionesses’ senior side. There was heavy criticism in the summer of England’s unrepresentative all-white starting XI, with a recognition that change could not be achieved overnight and greater diversity entering at the bottom was necessary to improve it at the top. There is still a long way to go. Efforts need to be put into making all environments welcoming and and ensuring diversity in the coaching and support staff at every level will be a key part of that.
