Irish academy system needs to be streamlined - Graham Gartland

Along with a signfiicant increase in funding, Irish football's academy structures will need to be streamlined going into the future, according to former League of Ireland defender Graham Gartland.

Last week, the FAI's academy development manager Will Clarke discussed the vast funding required to boost the work being done at academy level in this country and also spoke about the areas in which Irish football continually falls short in comparison to continental peers.

Clare said that approximately €10m per year needs to be invested just to remain competitive with other mid-ranking European nations - about half of that total outlay ideally coming from Government and other stakeholders.

Stark figures show that there are just a total of ten full-time academy staff members within Irish football despite the fact that 24 academies exist, while League of Ireland clubs' academy budgets would fall within the bracket of a European minnow.

In contrast, the likes of Croatia, Denmark and Switzerland, each have between 100 and 200 full-time academy staff members working across around a dozen separate academies per country.

Speaking on this week's RTÉ Soccer Podcast, Gartland, who has coached within Shamrock Rovers' youth set-up, pointed to the example of Portugal which has just seven full-time academies but more than 300 full-time staff as an example of a more streamlined structure that also affords far more crucial training minutes for players.

"What the academy system [in Ireland] has done is it has increased the participation levels for 17s, 19s and 20s at a really good level," Gartland explained.

"So I think in that sense the academy system has done well but it does need to be streamlined now.

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