One of the main objectives to be fulfilled with our proposed consultancy services is to help football clubs to improve their Youth Academy Development, as a key factor to ensure their future success on and off the pitch. In doing so, it will be necessary to achieve the following specific objectives:
Increase overall value of the local players through a revised technical approach to youth football.
Increase the profitability of the youth Academy through optimized recruitment, retention & transition strategies.
Ensure the sustainability of the Academy through a restructure of the operational model.
Ensure the sustainability of the club through a youth Academy capable of providing players for the first team of the club or selling them to other clubs.
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH
Within our offering, we initially propose our clients the possibility of carrying out an overall assessment of the youth football strategy of the club, to identify areas of improvement and suggest guidelines and best practices to implement.
In this case, we have developed a comprehensive model to assess the Academy’s current situation with a focus on Key Areas such as:
Budget allocation
Sports development
Infrastructures and operations
Player recruitment
Organizational structure
Strategic planning
Followed by a productivity analysis to identify the sporting and financial impact of the Academy on the results of the club and its Return on Investment, either through internal promotion or external sales.
The academy impact metric is an important tool for objectively assessing the performance of a football club's youth academy in the overall operation.
The metric allows clubs to see how well they are doing in terms of developing players who can compete at the highest level, while it is useful for comparing the performance of different academies. This can help clubs to benchmark their own academies against others and identify best practices.
The ideal rate depends on the size of the club, sporting objectives, PESTEL indicators and other variables. For instance, for an EPL club, a result above 7% would put you in the top 30%, while for a club such as RSC Anderlecht, less than 25% would be on the dangerous side, given their current strategy and overall variables.
On the other hand, it is also a key factor in the overall financial performance of a club. The more successful a club's academy is at producing top-level players, the less the club needs to spend on buying other players. This can help to increase the club's financial stability, and ultimately lead to greater success on the pitch.
OTHER RELATED PROJECTS
Aside from the assessment of the youth football strategies, we also offer our clients the possibility of collaborating for other specific projects that the club finds the need to address, such as:
Feasibility analysis of the creation of a new squad within the Academy, including the analysis of the financial requirements, expected ROI, alternatives to the investment and recommendations.
Ideation of a geostrategy, including the analysis of target locations, target partners, adjustment of recruitment strategy and setup, financial requirements, and recommendations, specifically on the integration of overall Youth Football strategy and operations (this includes the same country & other countries/continents).
Modeling and implementing of a structured Youth Players’ salary scheme, correlating potential, age group, family’s financial/distance effort and other specific factors perceived as influential to the effective retention of players.