{"id":218095,"date":"2026-01-03T10:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T10:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/218095\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T10:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T10:02:07","slug":"premier-league-academy-host-family-system-explained-and-theo-walcotts-gareth-bale-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/218095\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier League academy host family system explained and Theo Walcott’s Gareth Bale stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some clubs eschew the host family approach in favour of a boarding system, in which players live together in dormitories on club property, the most famous being Barcelona’s La Masia.<\/p>\n

“There are strengths and weaknesses to both models,” says Sam Bayford, Brentford<\/a>‘s academy head of safeguarding.<\/p>\n

“The reason we went with our model is that we want to give the players a real break, a geographical and psychological separation rather than living with and sleeping next to the lads they’ve been training with all day.”<\/p>\n

Adolescence is a key time for personal, physical and technical development in young footballers – done right, the management of an academy player’s living situation can propel them forwards.<\/p>\n

From age 15 Theo Walcott spent two years living at Darwin Lodge, a boarding house run by Southampton until 2010, which the former England international credits with underpinning his successful career.<\/p>\n

Walcott lived at the Lodge alongside players like Adam Lallana, Nathan Dyer, and Leon Best, and shared a bedroom with five-time Champions League winner Gareth Bale.<\/p>\n

“Being around the other players all the time I found really hard at the start,” the former Arsenal<\/a> winger tells BBC Sport. “But the environment was built to be like you were in a proper home.<\/p>\n

“When you have a lot of good players in the same age group around each other constantly every day, you can feed off each other, always willing to do well together.<\/p>\n

“People would act silly sometimes. You would come home and the lights would all be off and you’d know you were in trouble because Gareth and a lot of the other players would be waiting with their underpants on their head and batter you with pillows! You’d have to dart to your room but luckily I was quick.<\/p>\n

“Put us all together in a room even now, it’s like we saw each other yesterday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some clubs eschew the host family approach in favour of a boarding system, in which players live together…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-218095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}