It has long been acknowledged across the country that moving young people from a youth environment to an adult competition is a challenge for all sports.
Three key aims
1. Retain - Support the existing providers: leagues, clubs and volunteers
2. Transitional Support - Assist young people moving from youth to
adult football
3. Promote flexibility and encourage a range of opportunities to play in format, location, time, etc
And with football in particular, the need for support of players aged between 16 and 21 is underlined by the figures.
Statistics show that young people’s participation in football halves from 52% of the population in the 13–15 age range, to 26% when they are 17 or 18.
The challenge for The FA is that some of this drop off is for very plausible 'life’ reasons, such as starting work, university, socialising and the end of parental support.
But if a greater proportion of these young people could be retained in the game then adult football would be much healthier.
The FA has surveyed over 120 leagues that are currently providing U18 or U21 divisions for their experience, in order to identify a body of good practice that might convince other youth or adult leagues to review how they look to keep players over the age of 16 playing into their adult years.
"Young people’s participation in football halves from the 13–15 age range to when they are 17–18," said The FA’s Dermot Collins.
"We need to do more to keep them playing into their adult years.
"If we lose them at 16, it’s a lot more difficult to get players back into regular affiliated football."
