The Junior Premier League is a player development focused league, driving innovation and ensuring every player has a premier experience. We endeavour to be the world’s best provider of competitive opportunities for development and advancement in youth football.
The Junior Premier League is now 15 years old and from a small beginning, is now England’s only National league for youth players from U7 to U18 and is the largest league in the country with over 40,000 players.
We endeavour to create an environment where development comes first. Competition can be fun and players do enjoy winning but we focus our ethos on enabling players to express themselves without fear of making mistakes and without fear of the result. The important thing is we educate the coaches and parents before the season and then throughout the season to understand and support this ethos.
Every player selected for a matchday squad must play at least 50% of the game. Playing periods helps us to create a window for coaches to work with players to enhance their individual performance and means less shouting from the sidelines during the game, so expect to see matches over 3 periods for Under 10s and below and 4 periods for all age groups above that.
All coaches working in the JPL must be a minimum of Level 2 to ensure all players receive the best chance of reaching their individual potential. In the JPL 1 in 11 players progress into an English Professional academy. Much more progress into high-level non-professional football and college football.
By being player focused our retention rate for players staying within the game is 97%. This is because players being coached at a higher level means they develop further and therefore can remain in the game at the highest level possible. Compare this to below 60% nationally and you can see the difference the JPL makes.
We run all-star teams who have the opportunity to showcase their ability in front of professional clubs regularly, they have the opportunity to attend high-level coaching camps with top coaches and get to play internationally in prestigious tournaments.
Players have the opportunity to attend tours to fantastic tournaments in Europe as well as a prestigious tour to Real Madrid. This trip offers the players and coaches the chance to live like a pro staying at the Spanish FA HQ hotel, training at Real Madrid’s first team and academy training facility as well as playing Spanish opposition.
JPL carefully selects all clubs to ensure they are offering a great environment for players. This isn’t only in terms of coaching resource but it’s also important for players to have an environment where they feel safe to train and play and that the club has the appropriate infrastructure in place to allow them to be the best athlete they can be.
We work with clubs to help them grow, this can be as simple as advertising trials across social media but can be as advanced as working with clubs on plans of how to improve what they do and how this will attract and develop more players. Marketing support, social media development, club growth, technical plans, training plans are all part of what we offer to our member clubs.
We employ people that have the ability to help and educate parents and coaches on touchline behaviour to ensure the environment is right for players to express themselves in and develop a love of the game. These assessors attend matches across the country to monitor behaviour and report back to the league management committee so we can then work with clubs to ensure a great environment is created for everyone.
