New Players in Football

As I learn more about football and compare to what I know of sports leagues in North America, it’s mind-blowing.

One area that is different is how new players come into the sport.

In North American sports leagues, there is a pipeline for budding athletes to enter: the annual (or seasonal) drafts.

In the draft, teams review the ranking, performance, and résumés of new athletes all at once and each team get their pick. The standing of the team in the last season determs the picking order, with the lowest standing teams picking before the highest standing teams.

In football - there is no event such as a draft, or at least from what I know so far.

New football players are continuously recruited into a team’s football academy from an early age, at least for the teams that have a football academy.

New academy recruits may be as young as 12 or 13 years old, depending on their skills and talent, and would spend the rest of their time in the team’s academy with other recruits: eating, living, breathing football.

As someone that grew up in Canada, this blows my mind as I was in public school until university and any time for sports would be outside of school.

Imagine having new players that are 18 years old, come into your team that your team trained since they were 12 years old, day and night for six years.