0.06 percent.
This is a very small number, hard to understand.
But this is an opportunity for a youngster to become a professional footballer in this country.
Only six in every 10,000 make the grade.
The odds are the same as the odds of being dealt four aces in poker. Or finding a pearl in an oyster shell. Or become an astronaut and travel into space.
In an exclusive interview for Sky Sports News’ Documentary Chasing the Dream, Trent Alexander-Arnold said: “You have more chances to win the lottery than to make it as a professional football player.”
1.65m boys play our national sport. Less than one percent of them enter the academies of professional clubs.
Of these, less than one-in-ten (nine percent) went on to make a single appearance at the professional level. In the Premier League, the number is even smaller: only 1.5 percent of academy graduates will play a single match in the top division.
Liverpool star Trent Alexander-Arnold has spoken exclusively to Sky Sports News about his ’embarrassing’ footballing woes.
Armed with these facts, we began the largest and most comprehensive investigation ever undertaken Sky Sports News.
The original idea came from Tony Pulis, who approached us with their own experiences, and many questions.
After more than 400 games as a player and more than 1,000 matches under his belt as a manager, he certainly has concerns about the welfare of young academy footballers and their overall ‘failure’ rate.
Former West Brom and Stoke City boss Tony Pulis has expressed concern over player welfare
Now, with two grandsons in the system, he wants to know what football as an industry is doing to promote and support those who make it, and those who don’t.
What started as a plan for a 15-minute mini-documentary, quickly snowballed. The more we talk to people involved in academy football in England, the more stories we uncover and the more problems we uncover. Every time we answer one question, it leads to another question that needs to be answered.
Over the course of nine months, we conducted exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names in the game. Legendary managers such as Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti and Harry Redknapp.
Chasing the Dream: The Elite Managers
Sunday, November 24, 7:30 p.m
Elite-level players, incl Alexander-Arnold, Kyle Walker, Levi Colwill, Ollie Watkins, Jordan Pickford, Tyrone Mings and many, many more.
England’s Kyle Walker spoke to Sky Sports News about his own experiences during his early football career
We also heard some heartwarming stories from youngsters and their families who didn’t make the grade.
The series includes the first TV interview with the mother of Matthew Langton who took her own life after being released by Mansfield; with Lewis Reed, who came very close to death when trying to cope with rejection in Ipswich and Moses Swaibu who, after leaving the Crystal Palace academy, fell into organized crime and was given a prison sentence of 16 months for match fixing.
The documentary also features behind-the-scenes footage of the club’s academies, big and small. of Manchester United for City of Exeter, Nottingham Forest for Blackburn Rovers Kab, Crystal Palace for Chesterfield.
There are exclusive interviews with English football power brokers as well.
We spoke to the newly appointed Thomas Tuchel as the new England manager, FA Technical Director John McDermott, who gave his first TV interview since taking up the role in January 2021, as well as the Premier League’s director of football, Neil Saunders.
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Thomas Tuchel says his aim is to win the World Cup for England and he has got an ‘outstanding’ squad of players.
The EFL also features heavily with chief executives, directors of football and chief operating officers all involved.
You can also learn about the story of Curtis Anderson, who won the U17 World Cup with England Phil Fodenwho is currently a special financial advisor in the guidance of current football scholars.
Phil Foden after winning the U17 World Cup with England in 2017
What we have ended up with is three and a half hours of entertaining content, and a seven-part documentary series, looking at every aspect of youth football in this country. The good, the bad, and the seemingly impossible.
Because that is our starting point. Is the ambition to become a professional footballer an almost impossible dream? It is widely known that only a few minors can make a career out of the game. But that doesn’t stop so many trying.
millions of young people are “Chasing Dreams.”
Watch it Sky Sports Major League and Sky Sports Soccer from 24. November show on Sky Documentary from December 2 to December 5.
All episodes are available on demand from November 24.
