FOR some time now, Colchester United have had an established reputation for providing a realistic pathway for their academy players.
U’s chairman Robbie Cowling’s substantial investment in their youth set-up and their subsequent Category Two status within the Elite Player Performance programme has meant that producing talented young players has always been high on the list of objectives for the football club for more than a decade.
The success of the likes of Sammie Szmodics, Junior Tchamadeu, Frankie Kent and Kwame Poku at a high level has provided evidence that there is an opportunity for fledgling ballers to impress at Colchester at a young age and then move on to bigger things.
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Samson Tovide is the latest hot prospect to emerge from the U’s youth set-up and impress for their senior team and is naturally being tipped for a big move of his own, in the not too distant future.
But the Florence Park conveyor belt keeps chugging away, with a host of promising youngsters following in Tovide’s footsteps this season and tasting first-team experience, under Danny Cowley.
Winger Oscar Thorn, 20, has made five first-team appearances for Colchester since making his EFL debut for them against Chesterfield, in October.
Eighteen-year-old midfielder Milton Oni also made his league debut for the U’s earlier this season and made quite an impression before his season was cruelly cut short by a serious ACL injury sustained against Brentford, in the Carabao Cup.
Nevertheless, he has a bright future as do Ollie Godziemski, Hakeem Sandah and Rash Drysdale, who have also made their senior debuts for the U’s this season.
In addition, sixteen-year-old Lennox Emery, along with fellow academy teenagers Frankie Edwards, James Sasere and Harrison Chamberlain have all been among the substitutes for Colchester’s EFL Trophy group games in the 2024-25 campaign, showing that opportunity knocks for the club’s youngsters.
“It’s great that the academy keeps producing players,” said U’s head coach, Danny Cowley.
“This is a brilliant football club for young players.
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“For anybody looking from the outside in, the young players have the absolute best opportunity to develop and a great opportunity to have a really good playing experiences through outstanding coaching and a really good support network and a really competitive games programme.
“That’s where we’re able to see young players being able to make that real accelerated progress.
“You’re always trying to find that balance of producing good young players and giving them that pathway and also getting results in League Two.
“Probably last year, I didn’t think we had that balance because probably, we recruited maybe too many young players on loan so we had our own young players that we’re developing and it takes a lot to develop one young player, let alone seven or eight who are living this level of football for the first time.
“We’ve got some good senior pros who are good personalities and good characters and it’s not just the job of the player or the job of the coach to develop players.
“I think everybody in the building has a responsibility, whether you’re a physio trying to help that player understand their body and their availability or the sport scientist making sure they understand their physical performance to continually improve or the analyst putting together clips on how they’re improving and developing their game, or the chef and nutrition making sure the food the player has is the best possible food to fuel them, so that they can perform consistently well.
“Also when things don’t go so well, there are people here who are ready to pick the players up and give them the necessary love and support they need.
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“We’re lucky here that we’ve got such a good staff and so many people that are willing to put players before themselves – this is so important.”
Colchester also have some promising young players out on loan, gaining experience away from Florence Park.
“The likes of Frankie Terry and Max Jolliffe just go from strength to strength,” said Cowley.
“Will Greenidge is at Hornchurch, Alfie Bendle is at Chelmsford; this is a really good level of football for our young players to compete in and so good, for their development.”
Earlier this month, Colchester beat Arsenal under-21s 3-0 to progress to a Round of 32 home clash with AFC Wimbledon, in the EFL Trophy.
“Arsenal under-21s are a Cat One Academy with some of the best young players in the world and it showed how hard it is to be a professional footballer,” added Cowley.
“You can be the best in your age category but then you leave under-21s football and you go into senior football, all of the boys are then the best in under-21 players all the way up to under-35s, so it just shows you why that step is so tough.
“Credit to our academy as well because when you’re playing against one of the best academies in the world and when you look at some of our young players like Milton and Max and Bradley and Samson that have come through the academy as well, I’m not sure if I’d be swapping our players for theirs.”
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