The UK is one of the best places in the world right now for top academic and football universities, with the amount of choice it can be difficult knowing where to start when choosing the best UK football university.
Soccer Universities in England are becoming increasingly popular as the standard of football is ever improving, teams are looking to become semi-pro and more players are going onto sign for professionally through university pathways. Football in England isn’t a ‘working class’ sport anymore, players are much more intelligent than in the past as they need a plan B for when they hit retirement whether that’s going into management, sports science, analysis etc. Even on the pitch managers prefer having intelligent players as it can add additional dimensions to game play.
The first point to check when picking a good English football university is to look at location. Does the UK football university have many professional/semi-professional clubs within the university radius? Many professional clubs have scouts who watch university games to see which local talent they could potentially bring in.
Secondly, it is important to see which leagues the universities play in, many great English soccer universities play in what we call the BUCS Leagues (British University Colleges Sport) and there is the Northern/Southern Premier Division going right down to North/South/East/West 7 divisions in most. The lower the leagues the more causal the football becomes and less likely you will make it if you are looking to play professional.
The next important phase when choosing a top UK football university is seeing how many teams they have on the roster, some good UK soccer universities only have one or two teams meaning that competition for places can be very tough meaning many good players miss out on making the team but it’s also important to vet the best English football universities as some can have six or seven teams but they may all play in the lower leagues meaning the level might indeed be quite poor.
The final phase of choosing a good UK soccer university is to see if they’ve had any success stories, that might be to see if a UK football university have had any players go onto make it professionally or semi-professionally; if the best football universities in the UK have had any success in cup competitions FA Cup, Welsh Cup, Scottish Cup or European competitions; finally seeing if any of the best soccer universities in the UK play at a professional or semi-professional level.
UK Football Schools have done the hard work for you when it comes to a top UK football university -we are currently recommending what we consider to be the UK’s best football university and what we consider to be the world’s best football university. We can assist with September 2019 applications and introduce you to key academic and football staff, for 2020 applicants we will be holding open days in early autumn. For information on the university and open days please email info@ukfootballschools.com
