The only number we actually care about

In fourteen years, one child who came through here signed a professional contract. He would tell you himself that we were four of the eleven hours a week he was doing at fifteen, and it would be dishonest of us to put his photograph on the front page and let you draw a line from him to your own child.

The number we do put on the front page is that about two thirds of the children who finished with us at sixteen were still playing football somewhere at eighteen — a club, a university team, five-a-side on a Wednesday. That is what a football school can actually affect, and it is a considerably better outcome than it sounds: the ordinary result of youth football is that children stop, usually somewhere between thirteen and fifteen, and frequently because it stopped being enjoyable.

If your child turns out to be exceptional, you will not need us to tell you and a club will find them regardless of where they train on Tuesdays. Everything we do is aimed at the far more likely and far more useful outcome, which is that they are still playing at twenty-five.