Fleetwood Town have been given a cash boost by EFL Futures for introducing young English players into their starting line-up during the 2016/17 season.
The incentive scheme has committed a total of £2.25 million over the course of three seasons for those clubs who provide starting opportunities in EFL fixtures for players under the age of 21 and who are eligible to play for England (or Wales for Cardiff and Newport).
The EFL Futures campaign is central to the EFL’s ambition to create opportunities for young playing talent and represents a collective commitment made by clubs to improve opportunities for home grown players.
At Town, the Club is directly re-investing the money they have earned from EFL Futures back into Youth Development.
Fleetwood Town’s Technical Director, Gretar Steinsson, said: “We will use the money generated by this in two parts, one to send our U14s Academy side to a tournament this summer in Iceland which will be hugely beneficial to their development, but also to help towards the recruitment of a first team nutritionist, so the money is going to directly improve the future of our club.”
Last season was the first for the club’s Category 3 Academy and the club is proud of its strategy of giving young players opportunities.
Steinsson, added: “For a club of our size, the development of young players has to be our strategy of gaining success.
“We’ve found using young players not only allows us to deliver a key priority of developing young English talent which EFL Futures is designed to do, but also enables us to produce players which can become saleable assets. This is a big part of what we are trying to do in the future."