Lcfc Girls Academy

[foxinsocks]

Does anyone know about the scrapping of the girls academy teams?  I heard the teams had been terminated and staff sacked... players advised to play elsewhere.  Why would we do this?

[Vlad the Fox]

It’s a terrible idea. I mentioned it in the LCFC Women thread. I’ve quoted the posts I made below.

Edited 8 May 2023 by Vlad the Fox

[Vlad the Fox]

On 30/04/2023 at 16:22, Vlad the Fox said:

Disappointed to hear the latest move from the club showing that despite the Lionesses success in the summer the girls game still isn’t being taken seriously by the club. Moving to a tier 1 category they have ditched 5 academy teams, leaving just three teams, u16, u21 and the Women’s senior team up at Belviour Drive. They’ll be running emerging talent centres to coach girls alongside their grassroots teams. 
 

The academy teams were playing a high standard in the boys MJPL leagues, competing well with the physicality, speed of movement and thought and would regularly win these matches often taking teams apart. Now all these girls are expected to go back to grass roots girls football which, with all due respect, isn’t even close to what they are competing with now and are expected to progress to be elite girls by the time they are 16. Also, for comparison, these girls were beating the likes of arsenal, shef United, man u girls academies. 
 

It’s a regressive step that you would never see in boys football that will see talent move to other clubs that are still funding their own academies despite the cat 1 England pathway status they’ve attained, other girls will get lost in the system or lose interest playing at a much weaker standard. 
 

It would be nice if the club could see sense and reverse this decision but when these decisions are made by non football people this is what happens. It’s like building the roof of a house without the walls to support it. Leicester not funding their own academy to feed into the cat 1 is a short sighted move that will see the clubs growing and strong standing reputation in girls elite football collapse, a disappointing and backwards move by the club that will have long lasting negative effects all round. 

 

On 06/05/2023 at 08:21, Vlad the Fox said:

It’s slight of hand by the fa and clubs, Leicester aren’t the only one doing it. While everyone is looking at the new format no one is looking at them shutting the rest of the academy. 8 to 14 are being sent out to girls grass roots football, they’ve been playing in the mjpl for years and will destroy grass roots football. Winning 15 - 0 every week isn’t going to progress anyone, they need competitive football. They’ll be playing in teams where the girls aren’t on their level ability or attitude wise and the coaching won’t be as good as what they’re receiving now, if you’ve seen the standard of football these girls are playing it’s not going to happen in girls grass roots, far from it. Also what about the girls that will be pushed out of these sister clubs, will there bitterness created there. There’s a lot of these girls who have no desire to play girls grass roots.
 

Yes they can attend the ETC on Saturday mornings which then stops them playing in the higher standard boys leagues and the ETC only play matches during half terms, what’s that every six or so weeks. It’ll be interesting to see how many of the better girls actually bother with the ETC choosing to play Saturday football instead.
 

Surely quality coaching and testing the girls at the highest possible standard is the way forward to producing the best female footballers not sending them back to leagues they’d outgrown. other clubs like man city, aresnal, villa etc realise the value of this and are keeping their academies,  these are the teams that will attract the best talent until other clubs realise this and eventually do an about turn, and teams like Leicester are paying compensation to teams to get the players in that they could have had for free coming through their own academies. 
 

It’s no slight on girls grass roots or their coaches (I’m one) but they can’t provide what these girls need despite they fantastic job they’re doing at progressing the girls game at that level. 
 

Look at it another way, what do you think would happen if the club announced it was shutting the boys academy down up-to u16 and was sending all the other teams back to Sunday league football and to train once a week at seagrave on Saturday mornings?
 

They’d be outrage. 

 

[foxinsocks]

27 minutes ago, Vlad the Fox said:

 

 

Thanks vlad... but why?  Is it to save money? How does this help the club... and the girls...  wontbthe good ones just ho to villa etc?

[Vlad the Fox]

23 minutes ago, foxinsocks said:

Thanks vlad... but why?  Is it to save money? How does this help the club... and the girls...  wontbthe good ones just ho to villa etc?

Can’t tell, apparently funding has been increased to the womens team for next season. I think the fa fund/part fund the new set up and clubs are expected to pay for the academies, some clubs are and that’s where they’ll lose these girls to. 
 

How does it help? Short answer it doesn’t, the club or the girls, eventually they’ll realise when it’s too late the girls have gone elsewhere and will have to start from scratch putting them years behind. They’ve got the facilities to attract the best young players, under this new model they’ll be having to pay compensation to our rivals to get them.

 

Anyone who understands football can see that it’s madness but the decisions aren’t being made by people who understand football.

[bellab]

Completely agree with everything Vlad says above.

 

They put a positive spin on the announcement about the etc, with no mention of closing the Academy for the younger groups. The assumption initially was that these would be retained, in line with Villa, Man U, Man City, Arsenal etc.

 

From what i am aware all current signed academy players are being retained/offered a place on the etc for the relevant age. But how many of these girls, particularly the better ones will want this? It's a significantly worse offer than what they get currently. Moving from 4+ hours of training a week and a match, to 1.5 hours training and a match every 6 weeks is not going to help the progression  of these girls at all. 

 

They are saying that there'll be a minimum of 20 girls in each of the age brackets (with no maximum but they must surely have a limit to be able to manage and allow game time). So if all or most current players deicide to stay then the open trials where 100+ girls turn up will be pretty pointless when there's probably only a few places available.

 

I guess fundamentally it's likely to come down to funding cuts. All coaches are having to reapply for jobs, and these are for less hours too. So potentially they will lose the better coaches as well. Perhaps the decision was made when the women's team looked likely to be relegated? Which now looks silly when they should stay up and it's the men's team looking the more likely to go down..

 

And the push to encourage the girls to play in the sister clubs is bizarre. Especially as some of these clubs don't even have teams in all of the ages they are losing academy teams for. And as said previously. Where is the benefit of all the girls play in the same team, pushing out current players and then hammering opponents every week. They'd be better entering multiple teams in the Sunday Leics boys league, so they get more playing time together.

 

Anyway whatever happens parents are quite rightly pretty peed off with the news. Some had moved closer to Leicester specifically for their child's football (extreme i know but it happens!)