Just seen this quoted on FB, but not sure of it's provenance, but have put it here because it has relevance to where Jack and Ben Perry have originated from:
"Staggering stats. 97% of former cat 1 academy players now aged 21 to 26 never made an EPL appearance.
70% weren't handed a pro contract at an EPL or EFL club. And only 1 in 10 went on to make more than 20 league appearances in the top four tiers of English football"
The chances of making it in professional football are very slim...
Funnily enough I was looking at this earlier as I was wondering about how many players progress through academies. According to Wiki:
'Category 1 football academies in England can register up to 250 players in their youth development system. This number can vary slightly depending on the age group, with a maximum of 30 players per age group in the U9-U14 age groups and 15 players per age group in the U17-U21 age groups.'
There are currently about 28 category 1 academies so there are about 1500 players 18+ in academies at any one time.
If you extrapolate the number of professional players in the UK you can see the rare chance that any one player has to progress into the professional game.
Provided that players leaving the academies haven't sacrificed their schooling for football, I don't think this is too wrong.
Every player like Perry, Perkins, Shaw etc who makes it even to the Cobblers has done extremely well.
