Releasing Academy Athletes By Email Is Causing More Harm Than Clubs Realise

This might ruffle some feathers. But it needs to be said.

Every year, young footballers, many of them teenagers who have dedicated years of their lives to their clubs,  receive the news that they've been released. And far too often, they receive that news by email.

No conversation. No explanation. No warning. Just words on a screen, and a door that closes behind them.

From a psychological standpoint, this matters enormously. The consequences last far longer than most clubs seem to understand.

What Actually Happens in the Mind

When a young player is released without warning, the brain doesn't just process disappointment. It processes shock, confusion, and loss in a way that mirrors grief (van der Poel & Nel, 2011; Blakelock et al., 2016).

Think about what these young people experienced in the days before. They're laughing with teammates at training, joking with coaches, showing up and believing they belong. Then they open an email. And overnight, all of that is gone.

The brain struggles to make sense of an ending that has no closure. When there's no opportunity to ask questions, no conversation, no explanation, the mind fills those gaps on its own (Blakelock & Slater, 2020; McGlinchey et al., 2022).

More often than not, it fills them with self-blame. With doubt. With the belief that they simply were not good enough.

For a 16 or 17-year-old who has built their entire identity around the game, that is not a small thing. That is a wound that can shape how they see themselves for years.

Identity, Not Just Performance

This is the part that often gets missed in these conversations. Elite youth football is not just an activity. For many of these young people, it is who they are.

When sport is deeply tied to identity, as it almost always is at academy level, losing access to it does not just affect performance (Wilkinson, 2021). It affects the fundamental question of: who am I now?

A player who spent their childhood being "the footballer" suddenly has no framework for how to answer that. If the ending was abrupt, unexplained, and delivered digitally, they also have no way to process it. No anchor. No sense of what went wrong or how to move forward.

The research on identity foreclosure in young athletes is clear. When sport becomes the sole source of identity, transitions out of that sport, especially forced and unexpected ones, carry significant mental health risk (Brewer & Petitpas, 2017; Choudhury & Erdman, 2024). 

What a Conversation Changes

I am not suggesting clubs make every release easy. Sometimes the conversations are hard. Sometimes there are not simple answers to give. But the conversation itself is the point.

Even a short, honest, face-to-face conversation, one that acknowledges the player's effort, offers some context, and allows them to ask questions, does something that an email simply cannot do. It protects dignity. It provides a degree of closure. It communicates that the person mattered, even if the outcome is the same.

From a psychological standpoint, how an ending is handled has a direct impact on long-term wellbeing (Blakelock et al., 2016; McGlinchey et al., 2022). It affects how a young person rebuilds confidence. Whether they trust coaches again. Whether they remain connected to the game in any form. Whether they are able to separate their self-worth from the outcome.

This is not about being soft. This is about basic psychological care.

What I Want Clubs to Hear

If you work in academy football, as a coach, a welfare officer, or a director, please hear this: the way you end things matters as much as the way you start them.

Young people are watching how they are treated. They are learning what it means to be seen, or not seen. They are forming beliefs about their own worth based on how adults in authority treat them at the moments that count the most.

A release email takes seconds to send. The psychological impact of an unsupported, unexplained ending can last years.

We can do better. And for the sake of the young people going through this, we need to.

If This Resonates With You

This work does not happen in isolation. Whether you are a young athlete still carrying the weight of an ending that was never properly closed, or someone working inside a club who wants to do things differently there is somewhere to go from here.

Athletes: Book a free discovery call to talk through where you are and what support might look like for you.

Clubs & Organisations:Fill out the contact form or email me at info@wrightmindset.com to start a conversation about building a more psychologically informed environment for your players.

Author Bio

Stephanie Wright is a Sport and Exercise Psychologist in training and founder of The Wright Mindset, a practice built on the belief that psychological support should be accessible, early, and judgment-free. She works at the intersection of performance, identity, wellbeing, and health, supporting athletes, young people, and women navigating chronic health conditions in sport and beyond. You can follow her journey on Instagram at @thewrightmindsetHQ or explore her services. 

References

Blakelock, D. J., Chen, M. A., & Prescott, T. (2016). Psychological distress in elite adolescent soccer players following deselection. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 10(2), 115–133.

Blakelock, D. J., & Slater, M. (2020). Released from the dream: A longitudinal study of the psychosocial impact of academy deselection on elite youth footballers. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 48, 101666.

Brewer, B. W., & Petitpas, A. J. (2017). Athletic identity foreclosure. Current Opinion in Psychology, 16, 118–122.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.05.004

Choudhury, M. M., & Erdman, A. L. (2024). Identifying links between athletic identity and risk factors related to youth sport participation. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1362614.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1362614

McGlinchey, E., Hogan, M., & Donnellan, A. (2022). Released elite youth footballers' experiences of identity and mental health: A narrative inquiry. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 11(3), 342–357.

van der Poel, G., & Nel, P. (2011). Relevance of the Kübler-Ross model to the post-injury responses of competitive athletes. South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation, 33(1), 151–164.

Wilkinson, R. (2021). A literature review exploring the mental health issues in academy football players following career termination due to deselection or injury and how counselling could support future players. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 21(3), 566–575. https://doi.org/10.1002/capr.12417