Originally Posted by skeeta

The reality is if you have a good coach he will tell you results mean next to nothing at youth level. The "best" teams pack themselves out with mature players, rather than talented ones. The reason youth football in England has declined over recent years has been the obssesion with results. Fill a squad with powerful players and naturally they will swamp their under-developed peers, but in ten years time they will be stacking shelves in Sainsbury's.

Players like Danny Rose and Eirkem will normally suffer as a result being very late developers, physically. Today we still produce the physically dominant and powerful players that we’ve always done. What we no longer produce are the technically gifted players. The reason for this is simple - and is a global malaise - the obsession with results has permeated youth football. Winning at all costs has become the watchword.

Basically this means ability takes a backseat and physical maturity becomes the main selection criteria. Talent isn’t nurtured as it should be anymore. Youth football should be about learning and improving. Results don’t count for shit. Sadly this isn’t just a problem within the professional game. Taking it to an even earlier stage and park football - the attitudes of parents and coaches with the 5-11 year olds is a disgrace.

It is vital for the kid to learn his trade first. What happens is the gifted players are not picked for the youth team for the same reasons they wouldn’t be picked for the first team - they are not able to physically compete. The whole point of youth football is a safe environment where results don’t hurt so you can teach these kids their trade while they grow. Nowadays it gets treated as first team football with an age restriction. For the very late developers this is a disaster as they are no longer eligible for youth football by the time they have developed sufficiently.

As an aside the fixation with build doesn’t help the gifted early developers either. They often get ordered to use their bulk and are made to neglect their technical abilities. It is a rare kid who has the foresight to work on that off their own backs, they generally believe their clubs will do right by them.