The purpose of this research was to explore into English academies and create normative profiles for young players in both their academy and first team games. The study uses O’Donoghue (2005)’s technique to create the normative profiles with a sample of 16 professional football players’ from elite English academies.
Research findings found that, players who had similar scores across both first team and academy proved to be more consistent using the key performance indicators that were chosen. It was also discussed that full-backs “attacking profiles” were an indicator of success.
There could potentially be numerous implications of this study for coaches and professional teams, for choosing squads, for talent identification purposes and also, for training purposes. The development of normative profiling techniques may provide more insight and knowledge into understanding what makes a successful academy player become a successful first team player.