I’m delighted to speak with Matthew Layton this week. Matt is head of youth development phase at Swansea City Football Club. He manages the multidisciplinary staff departments and the players within the youth development phase to support and coordinate their pathway throughout the programme into the professional development phase. Matt and I discuss a brilliant paper he co-wrote with Dr Jamie Taylor and Prof Dave Collins about the measurement, tracking and development practices of academies. The paper is available here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02640414.2023.2289758