Preparation (Part Two)

Cardiff City’s academy caters for several hopeful professional footballers from the age of eight onwards. The ultimate aim is to produce players for the club. They cast their net wide, so how many youngsters do they have there at any time? “I think in total, all the way round the age groups a rough estimate would be around 140, because we are constantly bringing in new lads on six week trials and trialists,” the Director of their academy, Neal Ardley, told us.

He understands that the vast majority of those boys that pass through Cardiff’s academy  will never play professional football. It’s about percentages – most of whom fall by the wayside. What does the club do for them?

“I think for every age group at the end of every season you have a few drop out,” Ardley told us. “We run development centres. We have nine around the area and what we try and do is develop them and if they need it we try and drop them back into our development centre.” So how do they work?

“We’ve got our coaches running the development centres, so we can keep an eye on them and keep tabs on them,” he said. “When they get to Under-16s we support them as much as we can. We help them out to get a look at other clubs, or other clubs look at them and Steve Ellison who runs our education department speaks to them about college – where they can go, how they can take it forward – the links that we’ve got with coaches.” So there are safety nets for players that have talent, but ultimately don’t fit Cardiff’s needs. What about those who won’t make it at any level in in professional football?

Education:

Ardley and his team understand the importance of education, even as youngsters are on the verge of making it as professional footballers. “At Under-18 football when they are in full time with us for two years – they get an education programme within the academy set up,” Ardley told us. “Basically they come out of it at the end with the equivalent of two A-levels and a year on a coaching course – a coaching badge as well – so there’s loads of support mechanisms that are in place for the high percentage that don’t get there.”

Education is an important part of Cardiff’s philosophy. If boys won’t make it as players, there are other careers within football – coaching for example. “We’ve got a system here where we’ve got a link with the University of Glamorgan,” said Ardley. “They run a Football Foundation course where the players here do the basics with guarantees our Under-18 help them with coaching.”

It is a useful fail-safe. “If they pass that and they do end up dropping out or falling behind they have got the option with our link with the Football Foundation course at the University of Glamorgan,” he told us. “We’ve got three ex-players that work with our age groups in coaching, so obviously they’ve got a foothold. They understand what we’re all about and they’ve got a foot on the ladder.”

But what if the boys show no aptitude for coaching? There are other options. “Well what they do here is they do media training as part of their course,” said Ardley. “Obviously they get to know a little bit about how media works, because like you say different people have got different eyes for different talent – there is that.”