HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Performance Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1636386
This article is part of the Research TopicRefining Talent Identification and Development in SportsView all articles
Challenges and Solutions to Talent (De)Selection and Development in a Youth Soccer Academy: The Implementation of a Multidisciplinary Athlete Profiling Tool
Provisionally accepted
- 1Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom
- 2Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, United Kingdom
- 3Leeds United Football Club, Leeds, United Kingdom
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Youth male soccer is more competitive than ever as clubs strive to recruit, develop, and produce future elite soccer players. Within youth soccer academies recognising talent, talent development (TD) and (de)selection are on-going and complex multidisciplinary processes with several challenges. Part 1 of this paper presents three real-world practical challenges including: 1) the ability to differentiate between performance and potential, 2) understanding and alignment to develop talented players, and 3) decision-making processes and (de)selection of players. The paper then presents a possible solution to these challenges demonstrated through the application of a multidisciplinary profiling tool created and utilised within a youth male soccer academy in the UK (Part 2). Finally, Part 3 of the paper identifies the applied challenges associated with implementing such a tool within a TD environment and provides possible solutions for effective implementation. The creation and implementation of the multidisciplinary athlete profiling tool can facilitate TD, and support (de)selection decisions. The solutions provided may serve as principles that can be flexibly implemented across a variety of sports and environments to augment TD and (de)selection processes.
Keywords: talent identification, Youth, Soccer, multidisciplinary, selection, profiling, Challenges
Received: 27 May 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Barraclough, Till, Kerr and Emmonds. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sam Barraclough, s.barraclough@mmu.ac.uk
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