English women’s football pathway offers encouragement but questions remain | Tom Garry

With the Women’s Under-19 European Championship currently taking place in Lithuania, the spotlight is shining not only on the brightest young players from across the continent, but also on the health of talent pathways in different countries.

In England, the topic of youth development has been high on the agenda of late, not least because one of the key recommendations in Karen Carney’s extensive review into the women’s game was the need for the Football Association to “fix the talent pathway to create generation after generation of world-beating Lionesses”. The same review also called on the FA to “urgently address the lack of diversity across the women’s game”. That an all-white Lionesses starting XI won the 2022 Euros is just one example highlighting how inaccessible the women’s games has been for players from poorer backgrounds.

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In regards to diversity, there appears to be some encouraging signs; on the back of the creation of 73 Emerging Talent Centres (ETC) across the country for players aged 8-16 during the past 12 months, there has been a 112% increase in the number of ethnically-diverse players entering England’s youth pathways and a 112% increase in players from low-income backgrounds.

Much of that is down to geography: it used to cost £50 a week on average to travel to one of the more sparsely located Regional Talent Centres (RTC) under the previous pathway system; it costs just over £8 a week on average to travel to an ETC. There is still a long way to go but speaking at St George’s Park earlier this month, the FA’s women’s technical director, Kay Cossington, hailed the progress made and, in particular, praised clubs for a “mindset shift” in regards to where they had located their centres. Aston Villa, for example, have moved their girls’ site from a leafy suburban site to an inner-city area close to Villa Park.

The broader challenge is to develop future Lionesses, and to a large degree success will be measured by how regularly England continue to compete for major trophies. By qualifying for the Under-19 Euros for only the fourth time in the past seven stagings of the competition, England’s Under-19s are providing optimism in that regard. In May, England’s Under-17s also reached the final of their own Euros for the very first time, albeit they were ultimately beaten 4-0 by Spain.

Last summer, 100% of the Lionesses squad that reached the World Cup final in Australia and New Zealand had been capped at youth international level, something no other participating nation could boast, with an average of 4.3 players per year transitioning to the senior ranks during the past five years. However, there is cause for concern in regards to how much top-level club football the best young English players are playing. For example, every player in Netherlands’ current under-23s squad played top-flight football last season; in contrast, only a third of England’s current under-23s did the same.

Looking at the current squads at the Under-19 Euros – 16 of France’s squad played in a top-flight league last season while 10 of Spain’s squad did the same. Meanwhile, only four of John Griffiths’ England squad played any Women’s Super League minutes during the previous campaign. It was one of those four, Liverpool’s Mia Enderby, who scored the late equaliser against Serbia on Wednesday.

It’s a similar story at under-17s level, with a much higher proportion of Spain’s title-winning side playing top-tier football than their English counterparts, including Golden Boot winner Alba Cerrato, who played in seven Spanish top-flight games for Sevilla last season having turned 17 in January.

“England has talent, for sure. The pathway is more accessible and there are more opportunities than ever before, but talent needs opportunity,” Cossington said. “The pipeline is bursting. We now need to solve that next part of the jigsaw, which is to provide it with those meaningful minutes to allow it to survive and move to the top echelons of the game.”

It begs the question; why are more England youth internationals not getting meaningful minutes for WSL clubs? Partly it is because of a huge decline in the proportion of English qualified players in the WSL following a flux of foreign imports during the professional era. In the 2017-18 season, 60% of WSL players were eligible to play for England; come the 2023-24 campaign, that figure had plummeted to 30%.

Being the most professionalised women’s league in Europe naturally attracts players from around the world, with WSL clubs signing overseas talent as they seek sustained success. Indeed, there are more overseas players in the WSL than in any other women’s league across the globe.

The 12-team WSL is also smaller than the 16-team Spanish top flight, although not all Spain’s top-tier teams are fully professional. The Spanish are certainly doing something right, though, as they are the world champions at senior, under-20, and under-17 level.

Are more loan moves needed for the WSL’s best young players? Would the English pyramid ever contemplate the introduction of “B” teams, as seen in Spain? Or should the WSL be expanded? These will all no doubt be questions to be debated in the coming years as England tries to catch up with their considerably more successful rival.