Failed players sacrificed childhoods too. Does football care about their futures?
Stuart James
Additional reporting by Daniel Taylor
Do you play football at all now? "It's funny you should ask that," says Joe Swindell, who spent six years in Nottingham Forest's academy, from 2006-2012, before being released at the age of 18. "I've not been interested in playing. It got to me that badly that I fell out of love with the game completely.
"But I was around Ben's house on the weekend and he was trying to encourage me to play again. I was laughing, saying I've not even got any boots any more. So he's ordered me some new boots. And I was going to go to Belper Town, just to see if I like it again."
"Ben" is Ben Osborn, the Sheffield United midfielder who played alongside Swindell in the youth team at Forest along with Jamaal Lascelles. All three also went to West Park School in Derby. Osborn and Lascelles ended up being Premier League footballers. Swindell ended up suffering from depression. "I never really recovered from that and I'm still struggling with it now," he says.
Swindell's story is a sobering example of what can happen to young players when they chase the dream and everything unravels. Only a tiny percentage ever make it. For the rest, it is about picking up the pieces and trying to move on with their life. Some find that a lot harder than others.
"I'd been left out of the squad for the FA Youth Cup and I knew it was the end of the road," Swindell recalls. "I was withdrawn. In training, I was putting in stupid challenges and being aggressive. They had to pull me aside and say, 'What's going on?' I can just remember breaking down in tears. He (Nick Marshall, the academy director at the time) put me in touch with the club doctor and that's when I got diagnosed with depression."
After leaving Forest, Swindell signed up for a scholarship at Eckerd College in Florida "but the damage was already done, so that went down the pan as well". By the sound of things, Swindell wasn't in the right frame of mind to go to the United States in the first place.
"At Forest, I put my heart and soul into it," he says. "Even behind closed doors, off-season, I'd be running. I just took a massive dip. I went to America and, for the first time in my life, I struggled to find motivation. I never felt up for it. I went from being the most committed player ever to going out on Thursday nights and getting pissed before games. I came back and I was still spiralling down. All I'd ever thought I would be was a footballer. I was going out loads, losing jobs and, in terms of football, I hated it."
With Swindell and so many other young players who have found themselves in his position over the years, the question isn't so much whether the club was right to let them go, but more whether football is doing enough to prepare them for that disappointment and a life spent outside of the game. Does football really care?
The truth is that it can be a brutal industry. Any child setting foot inside an academy should be braced for failure if success is defined by whether or not they go on to make a living as a professional footballer. The filtering process within clubs starts way before boys have left primary school and, quite simply, never stops.
Johnny Gorman, who played for Northern Ireland's senior team as a 17-year-old and spent the best part of a decade in the academy systems at Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers, smiles wryly as he thinks about that journey. "They think they've made it when they sign scholarship forms. 'I've done it!' No, no, no, that's when the hard work starts," he says. "Then you get your first pro contract and it starts again. It's a constant battle trying to prove yourself year after year."
According to the Premier League's latest figures, 79.7 per cent of their scholars who joined in 2017 were given a professional contract in 2019 or had their contract extended. On the face of it, that number is encouraging and higher than many would probably expect, but it soon starts to tail off. Only 29 per cent of the Premier League apprentices who joined in 2015 are still in professional football now and less than one in eight are with their original club. That line will continue downward on the graph as the years go by.
Some working in senior positions in youth development are trying to move away from focusing too much on those statistics because they want to redefine success and failure as part of a more holistic approach. In simple terms, that means players taking away much more from their academy experience than football alone and clubs understanding that they shouldn't just be celebrating the nine-year-old who makes it into the big time.
"It will still be the case in lots of academies that all of the pictures on the wall are of players who have gone through to the first team," says Neil Saunders, who is head of youth at the Premier League. "But clubs are starting to put up pictures of players that might be an academy coach now or who have gone on to become a doctor."
It is a sensible and realistic message to send out but requires parents and players to buy into that way of thinking, not just the clubs. One of the problems is that too many will nod their head when they listen to the facts and figures while thinking that they don't apply to them.
In Swindell's case, he was academically bright but — and he is far from alone in this respect — joined as a scholar for one reason: to become a professional footballer. Nothing had made him think that that wouldn't be possible until it was too late.
"When you get brought up in that situation, where you are going to be a footballer, you're not prepared for any setbacks," he says. "All you've known until that point is success. You've always been the best player in your old junior team. You've got enough trophies you can point a stick at. It just so happens that for most young lads at that time it ends up being a dream-crusher."
Swindell returned from the United States long before his scholarship had been due to finish and started selling windows. Then he was making doors. He had a go at laser cutting, too. In short, he was completely lost and it wasn't until he decided to return to education that he found any sort of direction in his life.
"Luckily for me, what I've had to fall back on is I am quite intelligent so, after a while of being a bit of an idiot and not knowing what I'm doing, I went to university and I'm studying physiotherapy," he says.
Asked whether he would still go down the football path if he could have his time all over again, Swindell pauses for a little while. "It's a question I've asked myself," he says. "I've said a lot of times that I wish I didn't. I don't know whether I mean that or not. A big part of me wishes I didn't (do it) because it's put me a lot further behind where I could be in my life, and now I'm struggling with money. I'm a mature student and I've still got a couple of years until I'm qualified, when I'll be 28 rather than 21. So it's hard to say I would do it again because it's caused so much pain."
20 April, 1995. The manager's office at the County Ground.
"I need players who are ready to play in the first team next season, and I don't think you are."
Steve McMahon was brief and to the point. The rest of the conversation is a blur and probably lasted no more than 60 seconds. Aged 19, my first year as a professional footballer had come to an end at Swindon Town and there wouldn't be a second one anywhere else.
I remember feeling empty at the time. And guilty, too. Guilty because of all the sacrifices that my parents had made, including travelling all over the country throughout my childhood to take me to training and to watch me play. But also because, once all the excuses are set aside (and, as Chris Wilder said this week, those who don't make it love an excuse), I knew I could, and should, have worked harder that season.
Later that day, I returned to the County Ground for a reserve-team fixture against Bristol Rovers. I walked into the home dressing room and found out that I'd been dropped. I can still remember John Trollope, who was the youth team manager at the time, telling me how appalled he was by that decision. Truth be told, it didn't surprise me. That's football.
Twelve months earlier, I'd been offered a professional contract by John Gorman, McMahon's predecessor, and on the same day walked around the County Ground pitch with an arm around my best mate, whose heart was breaking after being told that he had been released. Now it was my turn.
I went home and sent letters off everywhere — and I mean everywhere. Scandinavia, Germany and to near enough every professional football club in England. I took part in trial matches up and down the country — a soul-destroying experience — and ended up passing up the opportunity to sign for Exeter City to take my chances at Chelsea in pre-season. A bad decision.
By the time the 1995-96 season was about to start, I had nothing, so I signed a 12-month contract with Weymouth and then, about six weeks later, left the club after realising that Graham Carr, the manager, wasn't my cup of tea.
I walked into a job centre in Bristol and for some strange reason expected doors to swing open for me. In reality, I had little to offer. I'd played football for the last three years, two as an apprentice and one as a pro, and I had a BTEC diploma in a subject (leisure and tourism) that neither myself nor any other apprentice in the classroom wanted to study.
After two weeks of signing on the dole — a humiliating experience — I was prepared to do just about anything. I took a job stacking shelves at Waterstones and joined Bath City, where I spent the next five years, still chasing the dream that I might get another chance in the professional game. Eventually, reality bites. You accept that you've found your level and need to find a career.
Regrets? Plenty. But those two years as an apprentice were some of the best days of my life. I'd do it all over again in a flash. Just differently.
Sitting outside a cafe in Bath, a couple of miles away from the university where he has been studying psychology for the past couple of years, Johnny Gorman is thinking about the way that a childhood spent around professional football can shape your life.
"You become institutionalised," Gorman says. "And I think that's why some players struggle when they come out of the system. They've been told what to do since they were nine years old. 'You play in this position, this is how we want you to play, turn up at this time, you do this test then, you can have your six-week holiday but we're going to give you a heart-rate monitor, so we'll be monitoring everything you're doing'. I've always struggled with that side of it."
Aged 27, Gorman has a fascinating story to tell. A decade ago, he was playing for Northern Ireland against Chile in Santiago. The following year, he was swapping shirts with Daniele De Rossi in Pescara. Five months later, he made his Premier League debut for Wolves as a 20-year-old. Then, as can easily happen in football, everything seemed to unwind just as fast.
Gorman, far left, on duty for Northern Ireland (Photo: Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
Looking back, Gorman now realises that playing for his country as a teenager created unrealistic expectations. "It brought a lot of pressure. It meant that a lot of managers were thinking I was going to be this finished article at aged 18," he says.
"I struggled with trying to express myself. When Mick McCarthy left Wolves, Stale Solbakken came in and he implemented a one-touch football regime. I was a pacy winger who liked to get on the ball and dribble. So for six months, I was not allowed to dribble. I had arguments with the reserve team manager — 'I can't do what I'm supposed to be doing.' It really affected my game.
"I left Wolves after that season and ended up at Leyton Orient after I went on about five trials, which is stressful in itself. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I do not miss those days of sleepless nights and thinking, 'Where am I going to be next year?'"
Gorman then drifted through the non-League scene and ended up doing all sorts of jobs. At one stage he had his own "20-car pitch around the back of a garage". He thought he knew what he wanted. Deep down, though, he was looking for something that didn't even exist.
"The chatter had stopped and the glow of playing football had started to fade. It wasn't the same as when I was playing for Northern Ireland. When you lose that identity, a lot of players try to find it in something else. And for whatever reason, I just got caught up in thinking that whatever I do will turn to gold. I opened up a restaurant and we shut down after about four or five months. Looking back, I think, 'Wow, what was I even thinking?'"
Gorman shakes his head. "I had a realisation that I'm doing all these things to try to impress people. I'm trying to keep up with the lifestyle that I wanted. I thought if I had the restaurant that I'd earn a load of money and if anyone questioned me I'd be like, 'Look at me, I'm successful in what I do'. That was when I probably started to realise that I needed to take psychology seriously, that's what I love."
An erudite and affable character, Gorman had always been determined that football wouldn't define him. That is easier said than done, though, when the game dominates so much of your upbringing.
Released by Manchester City when he was nine, Gorman joined Manchester United at the age of 11 and spent the next five years playing in the same team as Ravel Morrison and Jesse Lingard. Then came the chance to sign for Wolves, with the promise of a longer contract and, crucially for him and his parents, the opportunity to study three A-Levels at Repton School.
"At United, we had meetings with them and they said, 'Look, we don't really want you to be doing too much because we need you to be in training, so you could probably do an A-Level, but we'd want you in with the lads doing your BTEC'. And I was just like, 'That isn't good enough.' I was guided a lot by my parents as well, but it just felt right to go to Wolves."
Gorman joined Wolves where he was helped with his education (Photo: Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images)
Gorman says that his parents, who are both university lecturers, always took a broader view. "There's the glory and how great football seems on the TV. But it's the dark side that no one wants to talk about. There needs to be more awareness of that," he says. "I was lucky, my dad always went through with me — and I don't know where he found the stat — that aged 16 to 21, it's one in five that are still in the game.
"Parents need to look at it from a wider perspective and think, 'This is my child's long-term mental health at stake here.' There was a handful of parents at Man United who were friends with my dad and had these type of discussions. Some (of their children) have gone on to have good (playing) careers and some haven't. And there was a handful who were just acquiescent to whatever the football club said, and I'm sure that's the same at most football clubs.
"If you think your son could be the one who could go on and earn £20,000 a week, and that will solve all their problems, they're going to go all-in for that slim opportunity. And clubs play on that. It's sad."
Gorman sighs and then says something that I've heard a lot from people who've had a taste of professional football. "People ask me if you have kids, or when you have kids, what I'll do. And I say, 'I don't want them to play football.'"
When Gorman stops and thinks back, he finds some of the demands that were placed on him by clubs in the early days absurd. "There seems to be this need for professionalism at such a young age," he says. "When I was in academy football, they were saying, 'This is the best time for your family to go on holiday.' I was 11 years old."
To be clear, Gorman, who now plays for Frome Town in the Southern League Division One South, is not bitter. He is proud of his nine international caps and accepts — and that feels like an important word — that he "fell at the final hurdle". As for the whole experience, Gorman says he would do it again "purely for all the things I've learned that will help me later in life" and because "there are so many transferable skills".
"At 16, I don't think there are many other environments in your whole working life that would be that ruthless and where you'll meet as many alpha-male style characters, or very strong personalities, in one place. And that sets you up for life," he says.
In fairness, Gorman looks and sounds as if he's in a good place now. "I'd be lying if I said there aren't times when I think, 'I wonder what would have happened if I'd stayed at Man United?'" he says. "But, if you were getting on a philosophical path, I feel that where I've got to now is exactly where I should be. I wake up every day and I'm happy with what I'm doing."
After completing his PhD at John Moores University and before joining Manchester United's academy staff, Chris McCready travelled around the country for two years asking scholars to make a table using nothing more than a newspaper, a pair of scissors and some sellotape. "They'd obviously think you were a bit crackers," McCready says, smiling.
There was a method to his madness.
After graduating from Lilleshall, which was the FA's former national school and home to England's outstanding young footballers up until its closure in 1999, McCready had been "expected to shoot for the stars". Instead, he made the majority of his 351 appearances in the lower leagues and for the first half of his career was consumed by the game.
"I thought that if I did something else other than football it would be counter-productive," he says. "So it took me a few years to be brave enough to challenge that narrative, and then when I went for it, it was the exact opposite. I played way better just because I had more to me."
McCready enrolled on a science and football course while still playing and graduated with a first-class honours degree. Academically, he was only just getting started. Eager to explore identity and personal development in football in greater depth, he embarked on a PhD that was funded by the university. In his interviews with scholars, which formed part of his study, a couple of answers stood out from the rest. "They would say, 'I'm a footballer and…', rather than a full stop," explains McCready. "And they were the poster boys for me."
Working closely with League Football Education (LFE), which is responsible for just under 1,200 apprentices across 67 Football League clubs, McCready started to deliver workshops, which is where the table-building exercise came in along with plenty of others.
"We said the winner was the one that stood up and could take some weight on top of it," McCready adds, smiling. "And then I'd do a bit of an analogy. 'Why has everybody used four legs to build their table?' They'd say, 'Because you've got more stability and it will take the weight'. 'Why has nobody built a one-legged table?' And they'd all put their hand up and say, 'It won't stand up, it'll fall over'.
"I'd say, 'Perfect. That's exactly me when I was your age. When I was your age, I built a one-legged table and that was football, football, football, football, football, football. I thought the bigger and stronger I got that table leg, it will take me higher and higher up the leagues. I moved everything to the side — friends, education, relationships got lost because I wanted to make this leg bigger and bigger'.
"So then I'd say to them, 'OK, so what happens when more and more football expectation is being put on me and I've only got one leg?' They'd say, 'It's wobbling'. And I'd say, 'Yeah, it was wobbling.' And I'd say, 'How do you think I'm playing?' 'Not so well.' How do you think I'm enjoying it? 'Not so good.'
"So I told them that I started to figure this out in my mid-twenties and I put some other legs in alongside it. So I never took anything away from football but I remembered there is more to me. I had a relationship and she became my wife. We had some kids, and I'm quite into reading and writing. I went to uni and met some more people there, and before you know it I've got six legs holding the table up. And the crucial bit is I've never taken anything away from the central one. I've just propped it up with other stuff."
McCready is trying to teach players to make their lives about more than just football (Photo: Pete Norton/Getty Images)
McCready had their attention. "Who we are? How do we see ourselves? What's important? They're probably the biggest philosophical questions we're going to ask ourselves, so it can't be an academic explanation," he adds. "It's got to be a practical, visual representation of a big idea. And the table, we found, was the best way of doing it.
"I'd say to them, what would happen to my table if I kept it as one leg and then I'm no longer a footballer any more? 'It would fall over,' I said, 'Is that why we see lots of people struggling with mental health post-football? Is that why we see lots of people struggling to find a new way forward? Is that why we see so many issues – divorce, bankruptcy?' It's a complicated question, but is that part of it, that that leg comes out and the table falls?"
McCready, who has a refreshing outlook on youth development, believes that hardly anybody who attended those workshops would have been contemplating a life outside of football. Yet the point he also wanted to get across to those teenagers — and he used players such as Vincent Kompany and Juan Mata to reinforce this — was that hobbies and interests away from the pitch can help performance on it.
"It's not a revolutionary idea that you can like other things as well as your job, it's normal," he says. "The fact young players still find that so surprising astounds me. It makes me think that there's quite a bit of work to be done in this area."
That work started at United in 2017, when he was appointed player-care assistant at the club. "This is the end of the third season," says McCready, whose enthusiasm for his job shines through. "We run projects with the under-23s where we get them exploring these ideas and then we'll get them doing some short courses to try to spike some interest in something — coaching, cooking, business, languages, music."
McCready works across all age groups at United but says that when it comes to the club's youngest players, the best way to get the message across is through parents. "Live drama. Slightly novel," he says, smiling.
"We've written some scripts around a father and a son, and the father is pushing and pushing and pushing, and kind of manipulating this identity to be one-dimensional. And then we play around with what might be the cost of that further down the line and how that might put a strain on their relationship as they move through the age groups."
"We take them too young. I don't see how anybody can take a seven- or eight-year-old kid into an academy and realistically have a conversation with them or their family that talks about being a professional at the end. They might be a talent. But that is some journey you've got to go on. I worry that kids are signed up too early and that the dream is there at an age where nobody can know what's going to happen."
That was Gareth Southgate, the England manager, speaking to Michael Calvin, the author of No Hunger in Paradise, for the documentary that was based on the excellent book. Southgate is far from a lone voice on this subject. His thoughts are echoed by many, including some experienced staff in academies.
It's hard to find anybody who doesn't have some misgivings in one area or another about a system that stops children as young as eight from playing grassroots football with their friends.
"It baffles me," says Johnny Gorman. "When I was at (Manchester) City, I used to pretend that I didn't play for my local team, and I did on a Sunday anyway. So I played for City on a Saturday, and I loved playing with my mates on a Sunday. And I'd probably say that I benefited more from playing with my friends at that age group than I did from playing at Man City, where it was so much pressure.
"It was a very strange environment to go into at nine years old. You're at your very early development stage and you already have to put on an act and be someone you're not, and try to impress people. At nine, there's no bearing where you're going to end up football-wise. I get you've got to be in some form of coaching environment, but travelling in three times a week and then a game on a Saturday at nine years old is ridiculous."
The current set-up was born from Howard Wilkinson's "Charter for Quality", which was launched in 1997 to improve the quality of English-born footballers and proposed that professional clubs should have total responsibility for the development of talented youngsters from the age of eight.
Then, in 2012, the Premier League introduced the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), which built on Wilkinson's blueprint and aimed to give young players access to better facilities and far more hours of quality coaching.
The success stories are there, both collectively and individually, bearing in mind the trophies that England have won at youth level over the last few years and some of the exceptional talents that have been produced. The fact that an increasing number of homegrown players (55 — up 20 from the previous campaign) have made their Premier League debuts this season is seen as another yardstick that everything is moving in the right direction.
But what about all the boys who made the same sacrifices — stopped playing football with their friends at an age when they're still blowing out candles on a cake — and didn't make it as far as being a scholar, never mind a professional? Do we know what happens to them? Psychologically, how do they deal with being released? Where do they reconnect with the grassroots game? Do they even carry on playing football?
While nobody expects the days of players signing schoolboy forms with a professional club at the age of 14 to come back, there are concerns that it has now gone too far the other way and that football needs to rethink how it is dealing with young children.
Could there be more of a hybrid approach in the foundation phase (under-nine to under-11) that allows children to train with a professional club and play grassroots football with their friends too? What about reducing the commitment at that age to three days a week rather than four?
Pete Lowe, who worked in Manchester City's academy for more than a decade as the club's head of education and performance management, is adamant what should happen.
"As every year goes by, we learn more and more about how to potentially be able to work with young players. If we're not learning, we shouldn't be in the business," says Lowe, who now runs PlayersNet, which is an independent organisation that offers support and guidance to young players, parents and coaches.
"Playing with your friends, or playing with their friends, is, frankly, one of the most important parts of development that there will ever be."
"Parents, from what I know at Chelsea, are made very aware of the pitfalls for their son, whether they're eight or 12 or 14. The probability is they won't make it. And then I think the parents seem to take on this different sense of normality. All of a sudden, 'My boy is going to be a superstar.'"
That was Frank Lampard speaking on BT Sport a couple of years ago, urging parents to "calm down" and ensure that their son is working hard at school so that they have something to fall back on if football doesn't work out.
Some get carried away. One Premier League club called a dad into the office to tell him to stop patrolling the touchline during a game, essentially keeping up with wherever his son was on the pitch. They politely made the point that it will be difficult to do that if he ever gets to play in a 30,000-seater stadium. Another parent nicknamed his son FEC (Future England Captain). Some keep a log of the number of training hours, to try to hit 10,000. The stories go on and on.
Not everybody is like that, though. Lampard was preaching to the converted when it comes to Al-Amin Kazeem's mum and dad. The 18-year-old, who has just signed his first professional contract with Colchester United, was told by his parents from day one where football ranked in the pecking order. "They said, 'Football is plan B, it's not plan A,'" Kazeem recalls. "'Education is plan A.'"
That message was reinforced over time, even when it approached make-or-break point with his football. "Five or six months before I sat my GCSEs, my dad sat down with me and said, 'Football now is going to go on the back burner.' So I didn't go to training as much," Kazeem explains. "I only went once a week. And then to matches only sometimes, which obviously at the age of 16 is when you get your scholarship decision, so I was freaking out when he told me, thinking, 'I'm not going to make it.'
"My dad had a conversation with the club about it and there are loads of ways that conversation could have turned out. He was trying to be respectful and tried to explain his point of view. Thankfully, the head of education, Ian Lowe – he's done a lot for me – was really understanding."
Then came judgement day. "I was so scared," Kazeem says. "They got all of us under-16s in a room, it was time slots. You're with your parents, and you're with the other parents just waiting. A kid goes into the room and either he comes back smiling or he comes back angry and upset, crying."
Kazeem was smiling after his turn, although he probably could have guessed what was coming afterwards. "The first thing my dad said was, 'Congratulations, you did amazing. But we're going to have a conversation'."
Al-Amin Kazeem, playing against Arsenal in the FA Youth Cup, has made education a key part of his youth (Photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
That discussion also involved several staff at Colchester and led to the club giving Kazeem special dispensation to take a couple of days out of his football schedule to study chemistry, physics and maths at A-Level. In theory, it was great and allowed Kazeem to have the best of both worlds. In practice — and this is not uncommon when apprentices try to combine three A-Levels with football — it was a big challenge. Almost too big.
"I can't lie, at a point, I was done," Kazeem says. "I regretted the decision to do education. I hit rock bottom. It was too much. So there was a point when I stopped education and I stopped really trying in football. I was low, kind of depressed at the time, because I just didn't know what to do."
In the middle of it all, Kazeem lost his grandad, who has been hugely supportive of his football career. He was devastated and badly needed to take a break from playing and education. When Kazeem returned, he decided that he would use his grandad's memory to inspire him.
"I just knuckled down, cancelled my social life and hardly went on my phone," he adds, smiling. "My dad always says, 'There's no food for a lazy man.' If you can do something now that is for the future, you might as well do it now. So, in the off-season, I did more than I needed to do. I was far ahead of the class, so when I came back it would be easier. And then football got easier too because I had less school work to do."
Although Kazeem is not alone in studying for three A-Levels while trying to make it as a footballer — The Athletic went to school for a day with Luke Matheson in October to find out how he was managing to do the same thing while also playing for Rochdale's first team — very few apprentices take on that sort of educational workload.
"Over the years, evidence has shown us that unless a lad has got a minimum of five grade-7s at GCSE (grade 7 is equivalent to an A in old money), and they're highly motivated and committed, they're unlikely to get the grades that would provide them with any more UCAS points than the BTEC," explains Pat Lally, the director of education at the Professional Footballers' Association.
"And the thing is now, as I say to parents when I'm talking to them, when there is football on the TV seven nights a week, can you guarantee that your son is going to turn the television off and do his homework and concentrate on his A-Levels? Bearing in mind that a lot of the work will be remote, since they can't access a full timetable for A-Levels because of their work at the club."
It can be easier to make that kind of thing work in the Premier League, where finances are not so tight and more and more clubs are using private tutors. At one Premier League club, 10 of their 14 scholars are studying at least one A-Level.
"I think where we're fortunate now is that our clubs are well resourced to support the individual needs of the player, and that extends to the classroom as well as in their football development," says Saunders.
"Clubs have a greater focus on academic progression than ever before. Oliver Skipp is a good example: he was playing in a Champions League semi-final last year and the next day, Tottenham Hotspur had an A-Level tutor in to make sure that he received the appropriate learning hours and support to achieve a successful outcome in his studies."
Chelsea run their own educational programme after coming to the conclusion a long time ago that there was little point in a one-size-fits-all approach that sends scholars to college to study a subject that they have no interest in pursuing. Their approach opens up vocational courses and means that scholars at Chelsea have trained to be everything from bricklayers to hairdressers over the years.
The majority of 16- to 18-year-olds at other clubs will study a BTEC or NVQ in sports development, which is the standard educational course. "The philosophy is: we need to give them the best opportunity to achieve their first-choice career route, so the education programme that they do backs up what they do practically at the training ground. And I get that. And it does," says Paul Brackwell, Villa's head of education.
"But you'll always get the players who, surprisingly, are not actually sporty other than playing football, and if it doesn't work out, they don't want to go into the sport industry. We've got someone who wants to be an airline pilot, someone who wants to do business studies and someone interested in being an estate agent. The argument there is you're holding them back for two years by not allowing them to do courses that are relevant to what they would like to go into. So there are reasons for and against."
D-day. "It's one of the worst tasks that we have," says Brackwell. "We try to do it sympathetically. We will inform the parents initially, and then we will give the parents the option of telling their son — we think that's the best way. In nearly all cases, the parents choose to tell their son themselves because it's a very delicate moment for the boy. But if they want us to be involved when they do that, then we will be."
That is now the standard approach when dealing with what is widely recognised as one of the most difficult jobs in football — shattering a young player's dreams. How open or closed a club has been with their communication beforehand will make a huge difference when it comes to the reaction to that news.
"I've been part of that process," says Lowe, recalling his time at Manchester City. "It's always going to cause consternation when players are released. But I can't think of any player I ever worked with who I didn't know was not going to be good enough to get a scholarship contract. We all knew. Plain and simple. That was our responsibility. And if you wait until May, or whenever it is, to tell a player that he's no longer good enough, you've just created a cataclysm that could absolutely have been avoided. That's not appropriate."
Asked whether he worries that's happening at some clubs, Lowe replies, "I've had phone calls off parents who've turned around and said the communication that they've had at clubs, either with them or with their son or with both of those parties, has been non-existent."
Is that negligence or people avoiding the issue? "I don't think it's negligence. There's a real lack of people skills, I've seen it in action.
"Speak to parents. If you're not coaching at night-time, and you're in the academy, go into the canteen, have a cup of coffee with them. If not, go and walk around the touchline where the parents are, ask how they're doing. I can honestly say there isn't a parent who worked with me who didn't know how his son was doing."
At Villa, they have six-weekly reviews with all academy players and their parents for that exact reason. "They'll sit down with their coach and usually another member of staff as well, and they discuss how the previous six weeks have gone in terms of not only football development, but the way we see the boy developing as a person," Brackwell explains. "His communication skills, his teamwork skills, his general behaviour, attendance, punctuality, getting on with people — we call that holistic development and that's important to us. And then targets are set for the forthcoming six weeks, mainly on the football side."
The key is what happens next — from a club's point of view as well as the player. In a real shift from years ago, aftercare systems and exit strategies are required to be in place across all age groups and communication should continue long after a player departs. As with anything, some clubs are better than others. In March, Manchester United put 20 former players through business courses.
One leading Premier League club provides any released player from under-10 level upwards with a football CV together with footage of them in action and also circulates their name. Former schoolboys and scholars often end up being offered coaching positions within the academy. With older players, staff should also be helping them to explore plans away from football, such as further education or employment opportunities.
On top of the work that clubs are expected to do, both the Premier League and LFE track players for a minimum of three years after their scholarship finishes. "There are two strands to that," explains Simon Williams, who is a life skills manager for LFE. "We need the data to inform what we do. But the key part is that it's a support call. 'OK, you're a barber, you're working in Tesco, you're on an apprenticeship somewhere — is that what you want to do? Can we help you beyond that?'"
According to LFE figures for the 2017-19 cohort, 52 per cent were retained by their clubs and 24 per cent were either playing semi-professionally, in full-time employment or enrolled on higher education courses. Another 6 per cent were trialling. That leaves 18 per cent, or 109 boys, unaccounted for, which is a sizeable number. Trying to track people down isn't always easy. Contact details change and some players choose to ignore the calls and messages. Jamie Hopcutt will always be grateful that he didn't.
In 2011, Graham Potter got in touch with LFE, who had been running a player placement programme in Sweden for the past three years, and asked if they could help him to set up a trial day at the University of Warwick. Potter was in his first year in the job at Ostersunds, who were a lower-league Swedish club at the time, and wondered if some talent had slipped through the net in England.
He put together an invitation, saying "we understand late developers within the game" and asking players if they "want to be part of a club whose aim is to play elite-level domestic and European football". Anybody interested in taking part in the trial was told to email Potter directly with their football CV and character references.
For Hopcutt, who had been released by York City as a first-year professional after being with the club since the age of eight, it was a window of opportunity. He had not long dropped into the non-League game and was deeply unhappy. "That just made me fall out of love with football. There was no professionalism," he says. "There was a culture of drinking after a game on the way home and that's not what I was about."
The Ostersunds invite piqued his interest for another reason. Potter had briefly coached Hopcutt when he was a 14-year-old at York, so there was a relationship of sorts. Hopcutt took the view that he would "give it one last chance".
His description of the trial that day will strike a chord with anybody who has been through this sort of experience. "You turn up, you're in the dressing room and no one speaks, really," Hopcutt says. "And during the game, it's hard because everyone wants the ball, everyone is shouting, and you've got certain parents who are shouting on the touchline because they want their child to be spotted. You get players trying too hard. You've just got to do your best and hope for a bit of luck."
Except Hopcutt wasn't relying on good fortune that day. He scored a hat-trick. Potter, not surprisingly, was hugely impressed. "The next day we met in York and he said, 'I want you to come out.'"
Hopcutt laughs as his mind goes back. "I had never visited Sweden. I didn't know one thing about it. I've always lived at home. I remember leaving mum and dad at the airport, I arrived (in Sweden) and it was completely covered in snow. I went to meet a few guys, three lads who were all Swedish, in this sports bar. But then you settle in and realise how nice the Swedish people are and it just went from there."
That is one way of putting it. Hopcutt now has dual citizenship and a Swedish fiancee to go with two promotions, a domestic cup and a run to the knockout stage of the Europa League. All from an email. "It's been incredible. My life has totally turned around," he says.
Potter has helped Hopcutt to build a new life in Sweden (Photo: Nils Petter Nilsson/Getty Images)
Hopcutt's story is worth telling because it serves as an example of how players can bounce back from disappointment and go on to have a successful career. "You've just got to take every opportunity that you get. You don't know what it could lead to," he says.
With Swindell, the psychological damage that he suffered at Forest made it impossible to recover in football terms. Now aged 26, he still receives counselling and is certainly not setting himself any targets when he thinks about putting on a pair of boots at Belper Town. "It will never turn into anything other than hopefully I start liking football again," Swindell says.
Asked what football could do differently with somebody like him, Swindell admits that it's an almost impossible situation for clubs. "It's really horrible because, at the end of the day, they have to let players go. I don't know if they could do it a better way, maybe. It's such a difficult one. You just want these kids to realise it might not always work out, because when you're in that bubble you're already thinking you're a pro."
Looking back, Swindell wonders why they regularly had "performance-related psychology" classes at Forest with a view to "making us better players but I never once spoke to anyone about the actual mental health side, even though they know how tough football is".
That was probably a sign of where football was at that time. These days scholars take part in an extensive life skills programme that covers emotional wellbeing, equality and diversity, sexual health awareness and social media, as well as education on key subjects such as gambling, alcohol, drugs and psychology. Some of those topics were discussed in the 1990s too — but only in the back of a minibus.
Although youth development has come a long way since those days, the reality is that it is far harder to make it as a professional footballer now. Looking at all the hours that children are spending at academies, and the sheer number that are signed on with clubs up and down the country and across so many age groups, it is hard to escape the feeling that football is sending conflicting messages to those boys who are chasing the dream.
McCready listens to me say that and nods. "They're told that it's highly unlikely you're going to be a player, and I'm sure lots of them understand that, but (they think) 'I'm still here every year, I'm training all the time, you keep selecting me, and I've got on the next rung and the next rung.' It's implicit," he says.
"It's often the things that go unsaid that are equally as powerful as the things that are said, so just by definition of you being here, we think there is a chance, you think there is a chance, and everyone around you probably thinks there is a chance. And there is a chance. The problem is the chances are really, really slim.
"There are 12,000 kids in the EPPP system but the number of jobs hasn't increased. The landscape has changed an awful lot and while it brings some reward, we've got to make these difficult decisions about the consequences of it."
(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)