The purpose of The Football Association Programme for Excellence is to identify players of outstanding ability and place them in a technical and educational programme designed to produce football excellence in conjunction with personal development.
Within the County there are two Centres of Excellence operating at U10, U12, U14 and U16 age groups. One centre is based in York at York College and the other in Middlesbrough based at Eston Sports Complex. Both centres have to meet strict criteria outlined by the Football Association, as this is the pathway that future England Internationals will come through.
The establishment of 52 Centres throughout England are an integral part of The FA’s female player development pathway and is the pinnacle from which our Youth International players are selected. The ‘Philosophy’ of each Centre is to disseminate technical, tactical and theoretical information to each player stimulating the players learning. To this end, the precept must be to promote a player centred approach allowing the ‘game to be the teacher’ when appropriate and encompass the principles of Long Term Player Development (LTPD) as set out in the FA LTPD Introductory Guide for Women and Girls’ Football. Therefore, every Centre must consider the needs of each player and take account of their developmental stage from a growth, development and maturation perspective and implement a programme to develop young players who have and can maximise their potential in the short but ultimately in the longer term.
Some key changes to the criteria for the 2007/08 season are as follows:
FA Centres of Excellence may only play matches against other Centres of Excellence and not grassroots clubs.
FA Centres will participate in a full fixture programme on saturday mornings between September and April. In our communication to leagues and clubs we have indicated that girls who sign up for the centres will not be playing club football to aid the planning and preparation for the forthcoming season.
The official ruling that girls will be asked to sign up against will be that girls in the centre of excellence will play category A (international coaching and centres of excellence) and category B (schools football) games only, however, where insufficient games are provided in categories A and B a player may be released to play in Category C (club football).
She may only do this with written permission of the Centre of Excellence Director and due to the full fixture programme on offer it is almost certain that girls will not be released into Category C football.
It will be the responsibility of the Centre of Excellence Director to monitor the number of games that each player takes part in. This complies with Long Term Player Development and provides appropriate levels of competition.
More information can be obatined by visting: http://www.thefa.com/Womens/GettingInvolved/Postings/2008/07/CentresExcellence_details.htm
