'We couldn't wait 10 years to bring players through'

Yahoo

05-05-2025

Brentford made headlines when scrapping their academy and instead created a new, innovative B team model in 2016.
In part, due to the new Premier League rules, Brentford have re-started an academy in what might, on first look, seem like a u-turn.
However, the B team remains and this is a club in a very different position to where it was 10 years ago, as director of football Phil Giles, explained: "We had an academy but closed it in 2016. The reason for that was that we were a very small Championship club with low revenue and the spend on the academy wasn't meteoric but still big enough and we felt if we wanted promotion we had to spend every penny on that target.
"We couldn't wait 10 years to bring players through, we wanted promotion to establish some revenues.
"That's why we focused on our first team and B team. The idea with the B team was these are players closer to the first team, capable of making a genuine impact -players like Mads Roerslev and Marcus Forss came through that for our promotion team.
"When we got promoted, we reviewed it and considered re-opening the academy because our revenues improved. Brexit had an impact because it limits overseas player availability but also increases demand on British players from all other clubs across the Football League.
"We, for example, sold Fin Stevens to St Pauli from our B team, so that has changed. We also need more youth teams to get our Uefa license if we end up playing in Europe, and the final thing was the Premier League mandate changed the rules to tell us to open an academy so that was the final thing tipping us over the edge to do it."
He added at the launch of the new academy building: "The B team still exists and will do what it has been doing but will now have a pipeline from Under-9s to the B team, which also plays in Premier League 2, as Under-21s, but also play the same bespoke games as they always have done. The B team is still the link to the first team."
Academy director Stephen Torpey, formerly a coach at Liverpool and Manchester City, further explained: "We treat it like a private school for footballers.
"There are more coaches available, about five-to-one with combined age groups at younger levels, which allows us to give more tailored, bespoke programmes and give an opportunity to grow.
"We also encourage kids to continue playing grassroots sport to aid their friendships away from Brentford and take some of the pressure off. We've recruited 114 players and hired 54 full-time staff members with around 30 part-time staff on top to build out that team.
"We are the first club ever to go from a Category 4 academy to Category 2 and the next step will be adding an indoor pitch, a dome, to get to Category 1.
"Our Under-18s were the first men's team to have a female coach in Lydia Bedford. Our B team, which fulfil the U21s programme and we are in the play-offs, we're in the final of Premier League Cup, competing against Monaco and Nice in the Atlantic Cup.
"As a dad of four myself - I know it is about caring first and we want to be admired as the most caring, progressive academy, which fits the ethos of the rest of the club."
You can read more from Giles as part of a wider interview below.