Callum Buckley, 27, was a football prospect. He has been a member of the local football team since the age of five, where he competed in the English Weekend League, and his position at Berkeley was central defender. A member of the Winchester City youth academy, he came on as a second-half substitute and scored a goal in a friendly against AFC Bournemouth’s under-18 team. Premier League club Bournemouth, who noticed his talent, offered him a tryout after the game.
Berkeley joined Bournemouth’s youth academy on condition of receiving a two-year scholarship. He started with the under-16 team and then moved to the under-18 team. He nurtured his dream of becoming a Premier League player while receiving systematic guidance from the youth team. “The first year was really fun,” Berkeley recalled. However, “Things have changed in the second year. His fellow players turned into rivals overnight, and everyone competed endlessly to win a professional contract.”
Buckley signed a professional contract at the age of 17 and was named in the Bournemouth first team. A year later, Bournemouth gained promotion from the Championship (England’s second division) to the Premier League. Berkeley said, “Since then, the situation of extending the contract by one year has been repeated. I had to prove at every moment that I was an essential player for the team.” 카지노사이트
Berkeley was released as a professional player for about three years. He has not played a single Premier League game in a Bournemouth shirt. It’s all about keeping the bench a few times in EFL Cup matches. After leaving the Premier League, he is currently playing for a semi-professional team in his spare time as an analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
“You’ll be surprised, but I’m one of the lucky ones,” Berkeley confessed. He said, “When I dreamed of becoming a Premier Leaguer at Bournemouth’s youth academy, only two of my colleagues who kicked the ball together are still active on the professional stage.”
According to a study by soccer media Goal.com, assuming that 200 players participate in the youth academy under the Premier League, only one player (0.5%) advances to the Premier League stage. According to a survey by British public broadcaster BBC, out of 1.5 million youth and youth players active in all football clubs in the UK, around 180 players step on the Premier League stage every year, and the survival rate is only 0.012%. The BBC described it as an ‘impossible dream’.
When you look at the rosters of Premier League clubs this season, the grim reality of the youth academy system is palpable. Among the players who came from the youth club under the club and entered the first-team squad, cases worth mentioning as success stories include Harry Kane (30, Tottenham), Marcus Rashford (26, Manchester United), and Bukayo Saka (22, Arsenal), who were also selected for the England national team. ) about. In the case of Tottenham, there are only five people from the affiliated youth academy across the entire first team. Among them, only three players have experience playing in the Premier League: Kane, Oliver Skip (23) and Japhet Tanganga (24).
This reality is shocking to the remaining 199 players who have not advanced to the professional stage except for one out of 200 players from the youth academy of the club. Voices are growing that the Professional Footballers Association of England (PFA) or the Football Association of England (FA) should find a way to help players who have been eliminated from this system.
Players who do not go through the academy system can hone their skills in the lower leagues or pass a first-team test to advance to the Premier League. However, this method usually requires a period of several years.
Another way to enter the Premier League is to come from abroad, like Son Heung-min (31, Tottenham) or Hwang Hee-chan (27, Wolverhampton). They came into the Premier League after they were fully equipped. There was no way to join the club’s youth system in England, so he used a method that caught the eye of Premier League club scouts after honing his skills abroad.
The possibility of being born as a Premier League through this method is extremely low. Son Heung-min should be seen as a case of breaking through a probability of about 1 in 1 million and rising to the ranks of stars. But things are bound to change. Compared to before, the interest of Premier League clubs in Korean players has grown noticeably. Currently, Kim Min-jae (27, Naples), Lee Kang-in (22, Mallorca), Cho Kyu-seong (25, Jeonbuk), and Oh Hyun-gyu (22, Celtic) are attracting the attention of EPL clubs.