A preliminary multi-club project: Understanding player technical outcomes in European football academies training sessions

The optimisation of player development is a key area of interest for professional football academies. Considerable attention has been given to the physical outcomes of training sessions with less work on technical outcomes. Foot-mounted inertial measurement units (Playermaker) were used to track technical actions across 33,156 player-session data points from 11 European academies in five countries. Metrics included Mean Touches per player (MT), Mean Touches per player perminute (MTPM), Mean Releases per player (MR), and Mean Releases per player perminute (MRPM). Comparisons were made between opposed and unopposed training formats and across English Category 1 to 3 academies. Unopposed sessions produced higher MT (150 ± 107) than opposed sessions (98 ± 89) across all age groups. Belgian academies showed the highest technical outputs, while Norwegian and English academies had the lowest. English Category 2 and 3 clubs recorded higher MT and MR than Category 1 clubs, potentially due to more condensed weekly training schedules. Unopposed training activities result in higher MTPM and MRPM than opposed formats. Mixed training designs, incorporating both formats, are widely used across European youth academies and may support more balanced technical development.