Project Footballer

David is the former head of research and development at Manchester United, providing intelligence and support to the multi-disciplinary team across coaching, science, data, technology, medicine, operations, media and psychology.

Carlton Cole is an English football coach and former Premier League striker who scored 52 goals across 288 appearances for four clubs.

In this episode, Carlton shares the real story behind his journey to the top. He opens up about how cage football shaped his mentality, how his mother’s belief — symbolised by buying him his first proper boots — helped him earn a contract at Chelsea, and the lessons he learned navigating the highs and lows of a long professional career.

Carlton also speaks candidly about the challenges he faced later in life, including experiencing bankruptcy and recognising periods where he was “concentrating on things that give you temporary happiness.”

This is an honest, insightful, and motivating conversation about resilience, environment, opportunity, and the realities of professional football.

Let us know your thoughts on the episode — we’d love to hear your feedback

In this episode of Project Footballer, we speak with professional freestyler and internet personality, Daniel Cutting. He has amassed a huge audience of over 3 million across his socials from showcasing his incredible football technique online. As well as building his son's accounts past 250,000 in a short space of time, setting him up to become either a footballer or content creator.

In this episode, we speak to Chelsea Strength and Conditioning coach Harry Knock about how to develop physicality in young football players. He answers some interesting questions and provides us with nuggets of information that we all needed to learn!

In this episode, we sit down with Stephen Lawrence — Ajax Consultant and father of professional footballer James Lawrence — to explore one of the most overlooked factors in youth football development: birth month.

Stephen explains how being born later in the academic year can create hidden disadvantages for young players in the UK system, affecting everything from physical comparisons and early selections to confidence, opportunity, and long-term progression.

We discuss:

• Why early-born players are often favoured in academies

• How late-born players can bridge the gap

• The psychological impact of selection bias

• What parents and coaches can do to support late-born children

• Lessons from Stephen’s journey raising a future professional

This is a must-listen for parents, coaches, and anyone working to understand the deeper patterns behind football development.

On this episode, we interview the parents of Leicester academy star Nazar Mahina, they tell their story of how they raised Nazar, and how he has gone on to become viral, appearing on multiple HUGE football channels.

In this episode, we speak to English former professional footballer Joleon Lescott, who has previously won 2 Premier League titles, an FA Cup, a League Cup, as well as making over 500 appearances for club and country.  We discuss how Joleon made it as footballer, what was his journey like? What was his environment like? Joleon also gives a lot of insightful and interesting information that parents can take on board and utilise in their child's football journey.   We hope you enjoy this episode, please let us know your feedback in the comments below!

In this episode, we've brought together a panel including former Arsenal legend Paul Merson, ex-futsal star Rob Ursell, YouTube sensation Tim Grimwade, Chelsea FC scout Sean Conlon and Spurs scout Marcelo Graca. Together, we answer YOUR questions surrounding academy football and football development, in a bid to further explore the question... how do you make a footballer? Is there a formula? Please let us know your thoughts on this episode! Feel free to submit any questions below for future episodes!

Sonny Pike has an amazing story to tell. One that could really help parents avoid some potential mistakes, as they try to aid their child’s journey towards becoming a football player.  Long before every aspiring young footballer was social media-famous, Sonny was the first, and only, for many many years after, footballing prodigy who was made accessible, known, and even famous, to the general public, as he took his journey towards being a footballer. We hope you enjoy this podcast, let us know your thoughts in the comments!

In this episode, we are joined by Gabriel from Athlete Mentality, an Instagram platform with over 50,000 followers which discusses ways in which athlete mentality can be improved! We discuss how to develop a winning mentality for your child in this episode.