Off the back of the Lionesses’ success in the Euros, the Premier League is investing £5.25 million into girls football to encourage and inspire the next generation, with two National League clubs and their charities highlighted for their Emerging Talent Centres (ETCs) – York City FC Foundation and Chester FC Community Trust.
The Premier League funding will create 60 Emerging Talent Centres across the country, with the aim of increasing the number of 8-16 year old girls who have access to high quality coaching to 4200 by the end of the 2023/24 season. This is part of the Premier League’s £21m investment in women’s and girls’ football over three years, with £10.5m for the grassroots game and £3m for a new strategy for the FA Women’s National League.
Following a systematic review in 2020, the five areas of improvement to its player pathway that the FA identified are: better accessibility, more inclusivity, reducing the impact of early selection, more focused investment, and providing more appropriate challenges.
Licences were allocated on a regional basis with a mix of professional football clubs, club foundations and County FAs selected to deliver coaching programmes at the centres to develop the talents of young players. ETCs will be run by affiliated football clubs playing in the top four tiers of the Women’s Football Pyramid, Club Community organisations linked to league and National League clubs, and County FAs and FA Women’s High-Performance Centres.
Among the challenges of the five areas already identified, one of the key parts of the project is going to be work on research and insight, finding out where many South Asian women and girls are playing at the moment, and which clubs they are with. Active Lives survey data has consistently shown South Asian women and girls to be underrepresented at all levels of the football pyramid and to further the ambition of improving access and participation for ladies of South Asian descent, Sky Sports have entered into a working partnership with Sporting Equals to inspire more opportunities and promote greater British South Asian representation in football.
