The legacy of the EPPP: from a bad acronym to a system that works… just

Perhaps a handful of people could tell you it stood for Elite Player Performance Plan. Many more were very clear on exactly what it represented.When it was concocted and introduced in 2011, the EPPP was interpreted largely as yet another landgrab by the Premier League.

This time, the self-interested elite of England’s top division had decided that the way the country produced footballers was not sufficiently to their liking, and so they had decided to bully everyone else into doing their bidding.

Plenty of clubs outside the Premier League made their objections clear. The plan actively disincentivised nurturing home-grown players. It would deprive teams of vital transfer funds. One or two, including Brentford, eventually decided the environment was now so hostile that they disbanded their academy systems altogether.

And yet, a decade and a half later, as they watched England’s Under-21s retain their crown as European champions early in June, the plan’s architects could have been excused for thinking they deserve just a little of the credit. Not as much as Harvey Elliott, the player of the tournament, or Jonathan Rowe, the scorer of the decisive goal in the final against Germany, of course. And not as much as Lee Carsley, the coach who had masterminded back-to-back victories. But definitely some.

This is, after all, where English football has long wanted to be. Fans of a certain generation will remember the dread rhythm of previous decades: the men’s senior team would fail at a major tournament, and the Football Association would announce a root-and-branch review, a thorough examination of where, exactly, everything was going wrong.

England’s record at under–21 level – the only available proving ground for emerging talent – in this period was, without hyperbole, abysmal. Between 1990 and 2006, the country reached the finals just twice. They were knocked out in the group stages on both occasions.

Things improved a little after 2007, with a couple of semi-final appearances and defeat in the 2009 final, but what Carsley has overseen in the last two years is extraordinary, and it is hard not to direct at least some of the credit to the EPPP. All but two of Carsley’s squad came through Category One academies, the highest grade afforded to youth facilities.

England are now a genuine force at youth level. The country is producing talent in sufficiently industrial quantities that Carsley won this year’s under-21 tournament with a vastly different squad from the one who claimed the title in 2023. And in both cases, his achievement is burnished by the fact he did so without even calling on the best eligible talent, including Jude Bellingham.

EPPP might be a bad acronym. It might have taken a radical idea and made it seem dull. But it works. By one measure, at least. In other senses, the picture is a little more complicated. For a substantial portion of Carsley’s squad, this will be a summer of great change.

James McAtee, his captain in Slovakia, is on the verge of departing Manchester City and, possibly, the Premier League altogether. Jarell Quansah, the central defender, has already done so, signing for Bayer Leverkusen. His club team-mate Elliott, a boyhood Liverpool fan, is considering whether he may need to leave the Premier League champions, too. Four of Carsley’s squad already play abroad.

There are several reasons for this. One is the great flaw in the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Regulations which encourage teams to see home-grown players as cattle to be fattened up and sold. Prospects that come through a club’s academy can be booked in the accounts as pure profit, which can free up more money to spend in the transfer market.

The other, more pernicious still, is that the EPPP has only partly fulfilled its stated aim. When it was first drawn up, prime among the plan’s “fundamental principles” was a desire to “increase the number and quality of home-grown players” being given both contracts and opportunities by elite teams. The weight of talent at under-21 level suggests the former has happened. The latter may not have changed as much as hoped.

In 2013-14, before the EPPP could have any effect, 115 players eligible to play under-21 football appeared in the Premier League. A decade on, in 2023-24, that figure had risen as high as 177. These young players were getting more football, too: in 2013-14, 39 of that number played more than 900 minutes in the top flight (the bar used by Brighton, the game’s leaders in data analytics, to meet statistical significance). In 2023-24, it was up to 69.

The number of home-grown players – defined here as prospects eligible for the home nations – has been much slower to respond. In 2013-14, 24 British-eligible players were granted more than 900 minutes. In 2023-24, it was 29. Last season, though it may prove to be an outlier, it dropped to just 18. The Premier League is younger than it used to be. But that youth is not necessarily English.

For Elliott, McAtee and their team-mates, then, this summer may well be the one that marks the end of the innocent days of their youth. In theory, this team should form the core of England’s senior squad for the 2030 World Cup. If they are to make that happen, if this glory is to be a harbinger of things to come, there are hard choices ahead.

England has, at last, worked out how to produce talent. Quite how to allow it to flourish remains a work in progress.

Photo by Christian Bruna/Getty Images