UK Football Academy Finder is sister company to UK Football Trials who are the world's largest football trials company, with hundreds of players being scouted each year through their vast network of UK club scouts and contacts. At these events, it became clear to us that many players wanted a "football pathway option" to help provide them with the best chance of being successful. Many players are at a disadvantage compared to those at Pro club football academies – they simply do not receive the same level of coaching to develop or opportunities to impress. Given the same level of coaching and opportunities, many talented players who aren't signed by pro clubs, develop fast and can go on to get signed too. We decided that we were perfectly placed to help advise players who wanted to know the very best football programmes (and sometimes academic options too) to get their opportunity.
Since starting our research, back in 2017, we have come across hundreds of private football academies and football Universities. When you are investing your time and money into something, you expect to see results. Many programmes claim to be the best UK private football academies or football Universities and given what we know we don't necessarily agree! We get approached by many different programmes who want to work with us, but we only recommend the ones who we are happy to put our name to.
To give yourself a chance of being a professional footballer you need two things – firstly to be good enough and secondly have the opportunity to be seen. Given this, we look at each football academy and football University in relation to these two things. Firstly, you need the opportunity to receive high quality football training from well qualified coaches. Typically, all the soccer academies and Universities we recommend, use UEFA qualified coaches, many of whom have pro club coaching experience. Furthermore we look for great playing facilities and access to other high quality facilities to develop other areas like strength and conditioning and tactical video analysis. There also needs to be enough training time within the programme – typically we say that if you want to be a pro, you have to live and train like one also. If programmes do not meet all our requirements in this area, they will not make our shortlist.
In terms of being seen, we look to work with football academies and Universities which have a high quality fixture list which provides you with a platform to impress scouts and coaches who can open doors for you. When we make our recommendations, we also consider passport eligibility – if you are not eligible to be scouted / sign for an English club, there are potential options abroad where you can be.
UK Football Academy Finder is designed to find out what you are looking for and then advise you on which of our programmes are best suited to you. We have done all the research to find the very best programmes so you don't have to saving you time, hassle and avoiding confusion. The great news is that we get paid from all our partners for our marketing so this service is free to you and you will not pay more (sometimes you actually pay less!) coming through us. There are no obligations so please do get in touch as we would be delighted to suggest some potential options for you to consider!