Will the Barclays U21 Premier League be a success?

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This footballing season as you are probably all aware of, the Premier League decided to launch its own youth development league that was designed to help academy players, British players in particular, make the step up to professional, top flight football successfully. In theory it is a great idea, but will it work in practice? What needs to be done in order for the Barclays U21 Premier League to be a success?

Firstly, in order for this to work, I really do believe that television will do it the world of good. So of course maybe TV stations such as ITV4 and BBC Three could pick it up but in order for them to be interested, they can’t be playing their matches at their training grounds. The public can get involved in such a promising competition when they’re no seats for spectators to go and watch matches and who wants to see a televised match on a training ground. There is no atmosphere for the competition playing at training grounds. They don’t have to use the senior team’s ground but maybe a local non-league’s ground with a capacity of around 5,000 will do for the early years of the competition.  So overall, televised matches and usage of proper grounds for spectators to go see matches can help the league grow.

Secondly, play the games on Friday nights. It is the perfect opportunity to do so as not only not much else sportingwise goes on, therefore there would not be much competition for the league to wrestle with (which could help television companies have faith in the league). Many people will come home from work and kick off the weekend with a night out watching the players of the future perform. It could be a nice, relaxing release from the turmoils of the working week. Playing games on a Friday night will also prevent teams from using the competition as a means of getting first team layers fit for matches, as it will not be optimal for a player to play on a Friday and then play Premier League football the next day. This will allow the league to actually work on its purpose, which is to help young players develop into Premier League-worthy players, not for already Premier League-worthy players that just need match-fitness, especially as there are an increasing amount of Premier League stars aged 21 or under.

Finally, use a simple yet exciting competition format. The format they are currently using for the league’s inaugural season is a complicated one, where there are 2 groups of 8 and group of 7, a certain amount of each group progress to the knockout stages and the knockout stage is a series of complicated scenarios that I and many others couldn’t get their head around. Keep it simple, have a division of one or maybe two groups with equal numbers of progressors and then simply end with a traditional, two legged and seeded knockout stage. Maybe even throw in a second division for promotion and relegation. The Premier League and the Football League use a simple yet effective format, so why can’t the U21 Premier League do so?

Overall, the U21 Premier League is a great, promising concept that has bags of potential, but a lot needs to be done in order for it to reach the potential it and the sport itself deserves.

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