That's a fair point, that there is a debate to be had. The proposition I read in that article seems to be about promoting the federations and schools interests , over the academies.
I personally find it interesting that players are not seen as keen stakeholders in the discussion, and there is no.mention of player or parent engagement.
What value do you expect kids to add to the discussion?
Or to be honest most parents...
For me it isn't that they're not asking the kids, it's that it doesn't seem to take player development into account at all. The proposals mentioned are all about trying to let everyone have their cake and eat it too, which is going to do next to nothing about these tensions. All that is going to happen is clubs and academies will "officially" allow their players to do these things while quietly encouraging them to refuse to take part (also watch while the Phoenix academy get exempted from the requirements). Capital Football needs to decide if it wants players to get a consistent coaching message or let the current mess continue. If they are really concerned about player development the accreditation would be about the quality of the coaching at clubs and academies rather than who gets access to the players.
Okay so I think there are some realities here that you need to account for.
First of all there is no answer to the question "what is BEST for player development" it's not like last weekend's Lotto numbers.
Second of all Capital Football can't "tell" young players or their parents what to do. They aren't the Police. They don't have any real power to compel anyone to do anything, which Richard Reid alluded to when he said "we don't work for NZF we work for our Clubs."
What would you have them do? Say "right, everyone has to do Ole now because that is best." And if people don't? Then what?
For a brief period the rule was that if you didn't do FTC you wouldn't be eligible for NTC, and so selection to national teams would be on the line. You know what happened to that rule? It got ignored. Because national team coaches want the best players. And so they should.
I also don't agree with you that Capital Football aren't taking player development into account. I think they care about it very much. They also recognise that any system is imperfect, and nobody has the "one true way." So what they're being is pragmatic, rather than not caring.
They are, in my view, doing exactly what they should. They are trying to have an open dialogue, and some oversight.
The accreditation system is a good idea, in theory anyway.
Done right it will help parents distinguish between Ole and Kaizen and some sharkhouse holiday programme run for cash by "AC Milan" or whatever. When asked, Capital Football will at least be able to say "yes, that academy is accredited by us." Or, more significantly, "no, that one isn't." It will also take the pressure off kids to do it all by establishing some loose equivalence.
And the biggest issue here is the pressure kids feel to go one way or another. This sort of "between the providers" dialogue should be the start of mitigating that. You'd hope. Incidentally this is the sort of thing Capital Football has tried to do with schools but College Sport were never interested.
