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by Steve Heighway, Academy Director, Liverpool FC

If you seek an insight into what it means to be an academy director, consider an eight-year-old boy and his parents, signing their forms in front of you. From then on, if all goes well, you will have that boy to 16, you will guide him through a thousand coaching sessions, hundreds of matches. At the end you will have a footballer completely at home in every aspect of the game.

That is the ideal. If you look at the career of every great footballer, it is almost certain they will have had a great mentor, someone they looked to, someone who drove them to reach the summit.

In Kevin Keegan's day it would have been a teacher, or someone who ran a boys' club, or their father. Now, it is likely to be someone from an academy. When Steven Gerrard was at the Liverpool Academy, I did not take my eyes off him for a minute. There was never a day when I did not think what was going on in the lives of the likes of the young Robbie Fowler or Steve McManaman.

There is no better place for a nine-year-old to be. The alternatives are the Sunday leagues and the schools, which cannot possibly offer that degree of concentrated time, coaching and superlative facilities.

It is not rocket science that you gather the best talent, pair it with the best coaches and produce the best young footballers. In the early years, the academy system worked wonderfully and, if the Football Association have the will to appoint a hands-on technical director, it can work wonderfully again.

Shortly after the 1998 World Cup in France, Howard Wilkinson began a review that was to become the Charter for Quality - a study into the needs of developing English football. It was a fantastic piece of work and, having been coaching non-stop since 1982, I welcomed it with open arms.

The Charter for Quality had an ethos about it which was embodied in the setting up of academies, places where the best kids would be trained by the most gifted coaches.

The only games would be development games that focused on technique rather than results. It was the opportunity for a golden age of youth development and the academy directors from clubs would meet regularly to discuss training methods.

If you went to a Manchester United and Liverpool under-nines game, you would see the coaches from both sides watching the match and talking together without being worried by the result.

I understand why some, such as United, were opposed to the academy system which allowed clubs to recruit only within a 90-minute drive time of their headquarters.

Before the Charter for Quality, United had the most efficient national scouting network in the country, finding kids from across Britain. Now they were restricted to their own heartlands. Others, such as Southampton, who had very little competition on the south coast, flourished and have produced the likes of Theo Walcott and Gareth Bale. But it was not about producing players for the clubs, it was a national plan devoted to developing the best young players until the age of 16.

That system worked as long as Howard was employed as the FA's technical director - there was guidance and regular meetings with all 40 academy managers. Everything was to be about ball work and skill. Physical development was not an issue until the age of 14 or 15.

However, when Howard left the FA in 2002 and was not replaced, that ethos began to fade and the pressure was directed on to producing players for the individual clubs.

Sir Trevor Brooking is employed as director of football development, attempting to work with the grassroots game and with academies, but is now focusing on the former because as an FA official he has to deal with the politics of the Premier League running Premier League academies.

It is no longer a national academy programme because it has become fragmented. The academy directors ceased to feel like they were a collection of like-minded individuals producing young footballers for the good of the game.

It is not impossible to imagine that we will return to the 'golden age' but there has to be enlightened leadership from a figure who is obsessed with the need to produce the best young footballers we can.

Many fans do not understand how academies work. A boy will be around 15 when you are asked if you think he might have what it takes to become a professional. It is a question you should never be asked about a nine-year-old in your care, no matter how gifted he might be.

From nine to 16, kids at an academy have two programmes, one focusing on skills development, the other based on games. Over the course of a 40-week season, you will have them for 120 training sessions and by the time they are 16 they will have trained with you 1,000 times and played 200 games. You have to inspire them, you have to ensure they play without fear.

Those running academies must ask themselves whether the technical programme is right, or are they being diverted to working too much on tactics?

Some say that kids are increasingly diverted by other interests - computers and television - and that academies are being filled by the cream of Spanish or Argentine youth. Do they not have televisions and computers in Holland, Germany and Brazil? And you will find nobody from Barcelona in any academy up to the age of 16. Until that age we have exclusive access to the best talents of any young player in our area from eight to 15. And the talent being developed at the bottom end of the system has to be better than it was 15 years ago when the only outlet was league and schools football.

The raw material we have to work with is exceptional. What happens to the boys after they leave the academies is another matter. Is one reserve-team game a fortnight and the odd League Cup fixture enough? If they don't break into the first team immediately should they be sent out on loan? And if so, will it be somewhere where they can develop their talent?

There are players like Michael Owen and Joe Cole who are ready for the first team at 17, but the pressure is such that some managers might not have time to stick with a player who might not break through for four years.There is not too much wrong with our academy system that cannot be solved by proper national leadership.

Before academies, clubs were not allowed to work extensively with young players. The academy system gave us the privilege of being able to work with boys from the age of eight as many times as we wanted.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk