The training and development of young players both as athletes and individuals is one of the task soccer governing bodies assign to professional soccer team in order to fully exploit the social aspects of sport activities. Recently UEFA imposed new rules to improve the use of home-grown players. We analyze a panel data of English Premier and Championship league clubs for the seasons 2001-02 to 2005-06 in order to understand what clubs characteristics lead to the employment of young players in the team during official matches. Sport commercialization and the employment of star players have been considered harmful to this role. Our findings suggest that, counter-intuitively, economic and commercial aspects of clubs are not important for the development of home-grown players, for example well paid players do not crowd-out home-growns. Managerial policies play a significant role. Major clubs in the Premier league deploy home-grown less often; leasing them to the Championship league could be a solution. Attendance favors home-grown players, which hints at a more active communication policy for the clubs in order to nurture the link with the local community. These results suggest social responsible strategies for Premier League clubs in order to improve their perceived social role and to avoid invasive interventions from national and international governing bodies in their managerial decisions on the clubs.

We use a large homemade database on professional soccer in England to estimate the relevance of managerial ability on performance and the managerial skills in keeping up cultural diversity. The team manager faces a set of very complex tasks. Not only he is the head coach of the soccer team, thus influencing sporting performance, but he can also have an impact on performance, by improving economic efficiency or by limiting the organization innovation in order to foster the creation of organizational routines. The sporting competitive advantage translates into economic and financial performance; therefore the manager is a dominant voice in the financial viability of the club, too. We also measure the impact of cultural diversity: attendance appreciates home-grown and talented players, and dislikes cultural diversity.