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Britain’s Olympic sports are to turn to football in the search for the next generation of medal winners.

UK Sport, the body that distributes lottery funds to elite athletes, is in talks with the Football Association over ways in which young footballers who do not make the professional grade can be encouraged into athletics and other Olympic disciplines.

Preliminary talks have begun between Trevor Brooking, the FA’s director of football development, and Mike Whittingham, UK Sport’s performance director, aimed at formalising an arrangement that would vastly increase the talent pool for Olympic sports.

The British track and field team that will begin competition in Athens today is the smallest sent to an Olympics since 1980, and there are concerns that the decline in participation levels among children and teenagers could have a lasting affect on prospects.

Mr Brooking has first-hand knowledge of the problems faced by Olympic sports that spend most of the year out of the spotlight, having been chairman of Sport England, the body charged with increasing participation at grassroots level.

At this year’s World Youth Athletics Championships in Rosseto, Italy, British athletes failed to win a medal for the first time in the event’s history, and at the English School Championships this summer there was a record low entry, with some events gong straight to finals.

The situation in athletics and other Olympic disciplines contrasts with the health of football, which has more than 40,000 clubs at recreational level in England alone. Junior and youth football has never been more widely played.

The vast majority of players who set out to reach professional level fail, however. English professional football has a developed academy system to identify and nurture young talent, but only 1% of 14-year-olds currently in academies will go on to play professionally.

UK Sport is keen to offer those who fail the chance to fulfil their talent in other sports, possibly going on to compete in Olympic games.

The physical attributes of speed and endurance required to succeed in football are transferable to many of the track and field events and other Olympic disciplines.

“Universally, sport is not being played as much and the ingredients in terms of the talent pool is not as good as we have had in the past,” Mr Whittingham said.

“At junior level it is all about numbers – the difference between having five promising young athletes or 500 is huge. Football is taking all the talent at the moment, it has a vast number of clubs that soak up so many keen young sportsmen, and we are working with the FA on how we can take up young footballers that have been rejected.

“A lot of these youngsters have natural speed, power and coordination, which are ideal ingredients to work with.”

“Everyone gets driven to school and there are so many scare stories about children playing outside. This lack of exercise is leading to dangerously low aerobic levels.

“When you have kids who simply do not have aerobic capacity you are facing an uphill battle to make them competitive.”

The government and the administrators of the 28 Olympic sports are hopeful that the games will inspire more young people to take up sports, and provide a spur to the campaign to increase activity among schoolchildren.

Currently 70% of all children stop all physical exercise when they leave school, and the problems are particularly acute among young girls, who are one-third more likely as boys to give up physical activity and twice as likely to become obese.

Tessa Jowell, the culture, media and sport secretary who has been in Athens for the Olympics, is hopeful that success for female competitors such as the sailing gold medallist Shirley Robertson will inspire girls to take up games.

For the first time at these games the majority of Britain’s medal winners could be female.

“With role models like the sailors and of course Paula Radcliffe to inspire them, I’m hopeful that young girls will see the positive side of sport. It is a great opportunity,” she said.