Football League chairman Greg Clarke has moved to allay fears over the future of club's academies after the league approved the new Elite Player Performance Plan.
Payments to clubs for youth development will increase but the regulations also include the abolition of the transfer tribunal system, to be replaced by a fixed level of compensation - leading to fears that lower-league teams will lose their top young talent to bigger clubs on the cheap.
But Clarke told Sky Sports News: "Certainly if we start losing clubs from youth development, that will be a danger sign. We hope Football League clubs continue to develop, retain and fill their first teams with top local talent.
The plans were passed by a margin of 46 to 22 at Thursday's meeting of the Football League clubs at Walsall's Banks's Stadium, with three no-shows and one abstention. The new system will increase the amount of coaching contact time for players in the country's top academies - those granted category one status.
The system led Peterborough director Barry Fry to voice fears that some clubs could pull out of the youth development system altogether, telling BBC Sport: "Lower-league clubs will look at how much it costs to run their academy or school of excellence and think that, if the Premier League can nick their best players for a low price, what is the point of investing in it?"
But Clarke added: "There's always a danger under the new scheme that larger clubs will be a bit more predatory. We hope we don't see that, but I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that this is a major step forward for English football.
"There are lots of good things about this - increased development in football, increased budgets for football development, state-of-the-art tools to measure performance and a consistent approach across the English game which should have a conveyor belt of talent all the way into the national side to allow us to compete with sides like Spain, Holland and Germany, who have more contact hours in their youth development.
"While there are a couple of issues we were concerned about, one of which was compensation, we are strong supporters of the plan itself.
"I think it's a positive step. There'll be more money to spend on youth development, which means more kids will get a chance. There's a chance that some of those kids will go to bigger clubs more quickly than they would have done, but overall we have a better system going forward."
Source: PA
