In many American sports there is a system called drafting. This is where teams get a selection of players from colleges around the country and choose 3 players to play for the their team. This is what happens in NFL, MLS and MLB. But what if the Premier League had this system? How would it work (if at all) and how would it impact football?

 

Now the main problem with this idea is that pretty much no players go to university’s or college and unlike in the US, you will struggle to go pro after you finish university or college. This is because the average age to finish university or college in the UK is 21. Most players are playing professional football at the age of 17, due to coming up from the Youth Academy’s of clubs. In the US, NFL players are no younger than when they finish college and there is no youth academy to compete against. In the MLS the quality of youth academies are pretty poor, especially in comparison to Premier League teams. Players would struggle to go pro after the age of 21 in the UK, due to the large amount of competition. 97% of players in Premier League academies don’t play a minute of top flight football, which shows the struggle someone would have going pro at the age of 21. The average age of a player in the NFL draft is 23. This would shorten a players football career massively and would be less attachment to homegrown players

 

The only way this would work would be to abolish youth academies and make players go through college or university and go pro at 21. This isn’t smart for a number of reasons. One of which is because the MLS or NFL doesn’t have promotion or relegation. Youth academies pay a key part  in helping teams getting promoted to the top flight; whether is by developing a standout star for the team or selling them on for massive money. Without them clubs would have less players and fans and teams would have a less strong relationship between players which they have developed for a number of years.

 

The only way I can see a draft system working is if relegated teams are to give up players to the teams who kept their place in the top flight. The problems with this are that teams could get absolutely rinsed, and could lose multiple players. I would implement rules to ensure this doesn’t happen. First would be that each team gets one draft pick. This is because for 51 players to be lost from 3 clubs is completely unfair. 1 pick seems reasonable.

 Secondly is that instead of 3 relegation spots there are 4, except relegation would be differently formatted. The 3 teams would go straight down normally. The teams that finish 17th and 16th play a playoff match to decide which teams stays up and keeps their players and the team who goes down and is part of the draft. The team that wins this match does not however take part in the draft. Instead, the pick could (simply) go to the winner of the championship or (more complicatedly fitting with the theme so far) the top 2 teams in the championship would have a playoff match to determine to the team who gets the draw spot. The championship promotion spots would have to change, with the top 3 teams achieving automatic promotion, and the teams from 4th to 8th playing in the playoffs.

A rule could also be implemented so that a maximum of 4 players could be drafted from each team (so 4 from each team due to 16 teams taking part in the draft). Players can only be drafted if they have been at the club for at least 1 full year, to ensure that players that had been bought in the last summer/January window are not immediately shipped off to another club. The draft spots would work the same way to the MLS, with the team that wins the playoff match/Championship (whichever you go with) picking first, going up the league table with the league winners picking last.

 

Obviously there is probably zero chance of this happening and would have a couple floors that would need to altered, but it would be a cool, wacky concept which could make the league more interesting and could be a cool idea for a FIFA career mode or Football Manager mod.