Michael Owen blames football academy structures for lack of young English players

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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

 

Michael Owen gets behind BT’s Sky Sports ad campaign

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Micheal Owenis one of several current English Premier League players that BT will be using to promote their new BT Vision Sky Sports packages.

From 1st July 2010, BT will begin to promote the BT Vision’s Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 packages that will be available from August 1 2010 – spending more than £30m on TV, radio, press, outdoor and Digital Media promotion.

Owne will be on the television ad, alongside current footballers such  Shay Given, Gareth Bale and Wes Brown.  Also feautred will be the BT advert regular Adam, who is played by Kris Marshall.

The ad follows Adam from his flat, down the lift and into the carpark as the sound of a football crowd gets louder and louder. He heads toward a square of bright light ahead and as he keeps walking toward the light, he finds himself in a football tunnel, joined by Michael Owen, Shay Given, Gareth Bale and Wes Brown lining up to go out on the pitch. The ad culminates with Adam running out on to the pitch.

Entry prices for the new Sky Sports service will be as low as £6.99, with BT hoping to capture a slice of the market for TV football viewing with either new viewers or switching viewers put off by the high prices with Sky.