Michael Owen has urged the footballing authorities in the UK to adopt a draft system similar to the one used in the US for young English footballers. He says this will allow teams in the Premiership to effectively field B teams elsewhere in the football league this ensuring the future success of football in England. The blog from ex England star Owen appeared on Sportlobster the dedicated sports social network which is also launching its new iPhone app today.
Michael Owen has the credentials to make this statement being one of the most famous, and successful, products of the youth set up in England. Nevertheless, he feels that this is now failing in its task and his idea of bringing in a system similar to that of the NFL draft in America is certainly an interesting one,
Owen said on Sportlobster :
“I feel what would be hugely beneficial to the state of our national game is the creation of a loan system whereby every team in the Premier League provides a set number of English players to be distributed fairly among The Championship, League One and Two clubs. This is similar to the draft system they use in American Football.
“Each league club would receive two or three players per season in two waves (start of the season until Christmas then Christmas until the end of the season) from random Premier League clubs which would not only help our lower league teams but more importantly help the development of our future talent. Fairly distributing these young English players across all teams in every league as this would be much fairer than the current system.
“Imagine 150 or so young English players learning their trade in the lower leagues. It would do absolute wonders for their development. The experience gained and the ability to perform under pressure would be priceless. These are the challenges our youngsters need to be exposed to early on if we are to expect them to rise to the challenge later in their careers.”
Sportlobster co-founder and CEO Andy Meikle said:
“It’s important to have sporting heroes like Michael Owen using Sportlobster to talk about issues in sport and voice their honest opinions. It is also important for everyone else to get involved in such debates and be heard. This is exactly why we created Sportlobster, it gives fans a way to interact in an environment completely dedicated to sport.”
Read Michael’s full article and join the debate: https://sportlobster.com/themichaelowen
Link to the app: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/sportlobster/id726335461?ls=1&mt=8