The Football Club Masterplan: A 10-Year Strategy for Promotion from Step 5 to the EFL
By Cathal Morrison
English football is home to the most extraordinary pyramid system in the world, where any club, no matter how small, can climb from local grassroots pitches to professional stadiums under the bright lights of the Football League. But ambition alone is not enough. Rising through the divisions requires structure, planning, strategy, and the discipline to build a professional organisation from the ground up.
The Football Club Masterplan is the first comprehensive, fully detailed guide to transforming a Step 5 non-league club into a sustainable, competitive EFL organisation within ten years.
Across 35 extensively developed chapters, Cathal Morrison reveals the complete blueprint for long-term success, including:
- How to choose the right club, build the board, and create a winning identity
- Recruitment frameworks that outperform bigger budgets
- Football operations, coaching methodology, analysis, and sports science
- Stadium development, training ground evolution, and matchday operations
- Commercial growth, sponsorship strategy, and community engagement
- Fanbase building, branding, media, PR, and digital transformation
- Women’s football integration and academy category progression
- Crisis management, financial planning, compliance and governance
- The full transition to full-time football
- EFL entry requirements and Year One survival strategy
From the changing rooms to the boardroom, from grassroots academies to commercial departments, this book shows how to build a club that is modern, sustainable, and built to rise.
Packed with real-world practices, practical frameworks, and professional standards used inside successful clubs, The Football Club Masterplan gives non-league leaders the tools to design their future—rather than depend on luck.
Whether you’re a chairman, director, manager, volunteer, or supporter dreaming of taking your club to new heights, this is the definitive manual for turning ambition into achievement.
Your club’s next chapter starts here.