Dunno if you saw/heard the interview that Dean Holden and his son Joey did with the BBC a few months ago, he'd just turned 16 and was playing for Oldham's youth team. Dean made the point that the academy system works for certain players, but definitely not for everyone, and they deliberately didn't put Joey into one because he wasn't physically ready at the time and the danger was that he'd have got lost in the system, not developed and be let go at 16 having lost his love for the game, as he'd seen happen to other kids in his time. Whereas he was able to carry on playing for local sides, socialise with his mates, concentrate properly on his education and be a normal teenager, and now he's making his way at Oldham.