SURVEY METHODOLOGY
12 QUALITY AREAS – YOUTH ACADEMY ECOSYSTEM
Creating and refining the survey is vital in order to receive the answers and data required for the study P rocesses in football, or any other industry, are happening whether we recognise them or not. From a football academy perspective, we know what some of the these processes are, regardless of the club, and that they are relevant for running an academy and the development of players. These include: » Talented players exist, locally, and in other areas, and somebody is needed to identify them, and watch how they play » Players of all ages join the club » Players want to perform at the highest level » Players learn and develop » Coaches develop, and the game itself evolves » Young players need to be educated » Young players are constantly dealing
Survey: from origins to results Our initial list of questions was made by a team of football experts, and was refined by experts from different specialisations. These included coaches, analysts, technical directors, academy teachers,
with different phases of childhood (positive and negative) » The club will need to engage and interact with the community, schools etc. There are also other processes that we still do not recognise either because of a lack of knowledge or an inability to identify them. Yet those we do recognise and accept as important, we can convert into operational working processes. The first step is to identify them, then develop them to obtain maximum performance. Most likely, academies which recognise some or all of these processes and develop their operationalisation to the highest level will be the ones that are closest to maximising their potential. The whole idea behind running an academy can be described with working processes within the 12 Quality Area framework. Some of these working processes will be more important than others, and some might be implemented to a lesser extent. It was important to establish which of the working processes clubs are implementing and whether or not they are applied formally. How they are operationalised is a research area in itself, and was not part of this project.
Working processess selected by youth academy
Processes in football environment
Processes recognised by youth academy
EXISTENCE
RECOGNISING IMPLEMENTATION
pathway, from talent identification to leaving the club. We then used nested questions to help shape the flow, which helped respondents to answer only relevant areas and ignore those where it is obvious they do not have some process in place. For instance, if an academy does not have partner clubs, it cannot send coaches to partner clubs for education purposes, and so that entire line of questioning becomes irrelevant. Selecting an online tool with a lot of visual and formal possibilities available on different mobile platforms was also a must for this survey. An invitation was sent to all youth academy directors at ECA member clubs and they were given a time frame of seven months to respond. Response time ranged from five minutes to 30, which is reasonable considering the scope and uniqueness of the survey, and the benefits that can be derived from this research.
psychologists, school professors and strategy experts. From this list, we then identified a group of topics including talent identification, the people and structures involved in an academy, transition to the first team, decision making and more. In addition, we were also interested in the respondents opinion on the questions themselves as a learning point for further research development. Topics were aligned in the order they naturally occur in a player's development
12 QUALITY AREAS –SURVEY CREATION
SURVEY
Selecting online tool and shaping questions and forms
Sending invitations
Preparing list of questions
METHODOLOGY
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YOUTH FOOTBALL 2021-23
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