A new girls’ talent development programme has been launched by the Scottish FA which aims to help support clubs in developing the next generation of elite girls’ talent in Scotland.
The NextGen Performance Programme has been designed to align with our Performance Strategy: Accelerate our Game 2021-2025 and comes after substantial collaborative work with Scottish Women’s Football (SWF) and our associated clubs during the last twelve months.
The overall aims of the programme are to continue to enhance our talent development environments, providing specific performance programmes to support our clubs to deliver high performance environments and cultures focused on the development of our domestic talent.
This new programme will be added to the top of the current youth development pyramid to provide focused support to our talent development environments, a varied games programme designed to support player development specific to each stage, whilst aligning a pathway from grassroots to performance.
Performance Programme Overview 2024 (Feb-June)
Talent Development Environments with performance pathways from U14, U16, U18 to SWPL1 or 2
- Category 1 League Competition (7 Clubs), play each other twice.
- Category 2 League Competition (5 Clubs), play each other twice.
- Category 2 Cup Competition
- Weekly U14 Small Sided Games Festivals (3 Club) – Cross Tier (Cat 1 & Cat 2)
- Scottish FA Led Bio-Banding Festival – Category 2
Michael McArdle, Girls’ and Women’s Performance Manager: “The Scottish FA would like to thank all clubs and our partners at SWF for their work and support in this programme design and we look forward to the next exciting step in achieving the collective goals for our game.
“It’s been a lot of hard work over the last year to get this programme to where it is and we’re really excited about what lies ahead. The enhanced opportunities for girls’ and women in the game is vital to the future success of our national and domestic game.”
Fixtures can be found here