Harry Kane made headlines at the weekend and not for the first time this season.

The Tottenham striker is in the middle of his breakthrough campaign and clubs are now looking in their youth ranks for their own gems.

Because of this, there is added pressure on the next group of stars to develop into world-beaters and coaches up and down the country will be working their players harder over the next months in attempt to unearth that special talent.

For the players themselves, they will look at the 21-year-old and use him as their inspiration and take on board the time and dedication he has put in to get to where he is. But that comes at a price.

Not every player will go on to be the next Kane. Most will never grace a football pitch and will never live out their dream as a professional footballer.

Because of this, more needs to be done with players at a younger age to prepare them for life outside of football.

Some will retire early due to serious injuries. Others will never actually make it past the scholarship stage and have no idea what to do with the rest of their lives, especially the players who have been playing since they were eight and left school at the earliest possible stage in an attempt to “make it” as a professional.

Clubs need to do more when bringing through the next generation of athletes. For one, they can hammer home the fact that not everyone will be successful and will need a back-up plan.

But obviously not every club will pass on that message.

Some will push kids to breaking point knowing full well that they have no chance of making it at the club. They will then discard them like yesterday’s paper at 16 or 18, never to hear from them again.

For those who aren’t picked up by clubs lower down the football pyramid, some are left with no education and not many career prospects.

But the clubs can’t take all the blame. Parents also play a big role. 

A number of them will demand that their children continue to try in school just in case their dream of making it in the Premier League doesn’t come true.

But there are some, and we have all seen it, who tell their kids to forget about education and focus solely on their career as a footballer. That they will make it and when they don’t, have left their son or daughter with few life skills to make it in the world of work.

What about the players themselves? Do they not take any responsibility when thing go wrong? 

Well yes. Because some would have been told by everyone around them that they need something to fall back on but feel that if they pursue something else, the club they are training with will feel that they are not 100 per cent committed so will ignore the advice and go for broke. 

It is a shame but what can you do about it?

Is that where the governing bodies can step in? At the moment clubs can bring in players from as young as six years old which shouldn’t be the case.

By raising the age children can “join” clubs, it will stop the players from giving up on education the moment they enter school.

Kids are in a football bubble from six to 16 and if this specific career path fails, they are then sent out into a world that is alien to them. How are they meant to survive?

When a child does leave school at 16 and enter a scholarship deal with a club they are still meant to attend lessons at college. But that is for one day a week, one-and-a-half in a few. The rest is spent on the training field. That needs to be reversed immediately.

Players should be in the classroom at least three days a week and out training for the other two days.

This is where I feel that the US National Football League (NFL) has things a bit better, but just a bit.

To make it into the NFL, players need to finish high school and university before being drafted into the league. 

While they are entering the professional sport with a longer education, there still isn’t enough in place for those that don’t make it and the fact is the large majority won’t.

Research in 2013 showed that of 1,086,627 high-school players, 6.5 per cent will make it to university level. 

Just 1.5 per cent will then ply their trade in the NFL.

But even if you make it, only 10 per cent have careers of 10 years or longer. So the chances of making a living in the sport are very low. Almost all are out after just three years.

And there is no programme for players kicked out by the age of 24. Due to joining L after graduating from university, some have a trade or a degree to fall back on. 

But there are some who graduated with degrees which don’t actually mean anything and were easy subjects to pass, just so they would make it into the NFL.

The numbers in Britain are just as bad. Of the 8,000 kids in the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan, 95-98 per cent will not be in the league by the age of 21.

If football was a school, it would have been shut down years ago. So how has it been allowed to operate at his level for so long?