Hadn’t seen a dedicated academy thread so thought it would be handy to have one with the academy kicking off this season.
Starting with the academy on tour in Ireland playing friendlies against Cork and Waterford acadamies today.
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The club have now put up an introduction to the academy players:
Academy unveils PDP squad for 2025/26 - Wycombe Wanderers
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Hard not to be excited about this. A huge amount of time, money and effort has gone into getting this off the ground in such a short time, and hopefully it’ll serve the club well for years to come,
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Reading those player descriptions it sounds like we’ve already assembled a squad that could challenge for the Champions League, let alone the Championship!
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Interesting mix of players that have played at a number of different levels in a number of different Clubs. Quite the feat in terms of recruitment, scouting and signing and reading through the profiles it looks like there’s quite a lot of different types of player with different skill sets. Looking forward to following their development and hope to get to a few U21 games next season to support another strand of our Club, and good to see that a few of them have already trained up with the main squad too.
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Didnt someone say sonething about rumours of the first academy signing. I recall it seemingly implying sonething, but none of these kids look like anything more than talented youngsters
Based on nothing other than the cut of their jib, my tips for success are Christian Swaby, Mekhi Savage and Micah Olabiyi.
I for one am actually excited about the academy. My football (watching) journey started with youth or schoolboys footy in the 70’s or early 80’s at Loakes Park, and am excited about the day we have “one of our own” making their debut in the first team again. Exciting times and good luck to all the youngsters involved so far.
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Hopefully in a few years we’ll see one of these kids leaping into the Valley End having scored one of the most important goals in our history.
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Some of the names of their previous clubs are beyond my understanding.
Bedhead FC
Levels FC
Kinetic Academy
East London Soccor
Talent X Academy
I like, even though it’s making me feel incredibly old and out of touch, it does seem like there is a wealth of grassroots football teams full of players we can hopefully help to become pro footballers.
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Those Kinetic Academy & Talent X Academy’s are money making tools for students who love football but didn’t want to go into a college for their A Levels / BTEC’s. They claim that they can get students into the professional game and that they have contacts with scouts but in truth, they don’t. The fact that we have a few of them from these types of Academies will be used in their marketing for years to come…. “We got X into Wycombe Wanderers” even if they don’t make the grade
I don’t see that as a negative to look through these academies. We have recently, from what I understand, looked at players that haven’t always come through the traditional way, or left the more traditional academies and reentered much lower down the pyramid (Forino from Loughborough uni and Mehmeti spring to mind) to build players up - and if this is a source to players not already heavily scouted, it could pay dividends.
The sad truth its such a small percentage of these kids that “make it” as a professional anyway, the odds are stacked against them wherever they come from.
My issue with those “Academies” is that they hook in students from different schools and from good backgrounds. Charge them £3,500 - £6k for the year, promise that they will get noticed from clubs and they will get qualifications and they often fail on both.