{"id":552310,"date":"2026-03-20T07:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T07:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/552310\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T07:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T07:14:08","slug":"tony-pulis-column-why-the-academy-system-needs-an-overhaul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/552310\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Pulis column: Why the academy system needs an overhaul"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favourite moments of the season came last week, watching Arsenal<\/a>‘s Max Dowman break forward from his own penalty area to score a goal that sealed his side’s Premier League win over Everton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Young homegrown talents are always appreciated by their team’s supporters and from what I’ve seen so far of the 16-year-old, Arsenal<\/a> fans are going to enjoy more special moments from him in the years to come.<\/p>\n

But for every Max Dowman who emerges from the academy system and achieves his dream of a career in the professional game, there are thousands of other boys and girls who don’t make it through the different stages, and have to deal with a crushing rejection at a young age.<\/p>\n

It is these players who drop out of academy football that I am concerned about, because I don’t think the current system does enough to inform them about their chances, or look after them when they are discarded.<\/p>\n

It needs an overhaul and when I retired from management in 2020, I compiled my own report into the academy system, including proposals for how it could be improved, then spent almost a year filming a documentary series for Sky Sports about it, called ‘Chasing the Dream’.<\/p>\n

It investigated the pathway into the men’s game, where our research showed that 91% of young players at academies never play a professional game.<\/p>\n

While I was working on the series, I travelled the country talking to people at all levels of the football pyramid about their experiences within the academy system – good and bad.<\/p>\n

During many moments where I saw success and failure, I encountered the tragic situation of a young lad, Jeremy Wisten, who had been released by Manchester City<\/a> and taken his own life in 2020 at the age of 18.<\/p>\n

He was not alone in being unable to deal with what can be an unbearable situation, and his mum was so open and honest when she was talking about his journey on the programme.<\/p>\n

We also met lads who had become trapped in dealing drugs or had major mental care issues, which occurred because of the rejection they experienced when they dropped out of football – and also the emptiness of not waking up to any other job opportunities.<\/p>\n

The facilities I saw when I visited different academies were incredible, but I still don’t feel like the balance with education is right. It feels to me like we have a responsibility to not only produce elite players, but also produce good people too, including the ones who don’t make it.<\/p>\n

That means looking after them better than we are at present, especially when they are told they are not good enough, which happens with the vast majority of these kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of my favourite moments of the season came last week, watching Arsenal‘s Max Dowman break forward from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-552310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}