Tom Vernon: Right to Dream, a football revelation
The early years
At the age of 19-years-old Tom Vernon could have never imagined in his wildest dreams that a trip to Africa, to coach in Ghana, could have developed into him founding the Right to Dream and becoming Chairman of Danish Superliga side FC Nordsjaelland.
After coaching Vernon made the transition into scouting after securing the role of Manchester United’s chief African scout, before turning his full attention to Right To Dream, a football academy with a difference, which he founded in 1999.
The origins of an academy were born in Tom’s house in Accra whilst he was coaching Accra Great Olympics, Ghana’s third-biggest club. Due to the lack of infrastructure, Tom took the executive decision to opened his doors within his family home and took in 16 players in order to ensure they had a secure foundation, offering them stability.
The academy was initially labelled as Tom Vernon Football Academy, however, this was swiftly changed in order to provide more marketing opportunities.
“from the initial 16 kids, three ended up playing for Ghana, five became pro’s in Europe and six graduated from division one universities in America”
The Right To Dream academy holds significant value to the development of character, the educational program focuses on educating players on the importance of giving back and finding a purpose beyond being a soccer player.
It does this through the promotion of three core foundations (football, education and character) of football which underpins everything within the Academy.
The Right to Dream philosophy
The philosophy within Right To Dream is a long-term investment which focuses on ensuring that each and every player is given the best possible chance to reach their potential.
The academy strives to give their players and student-athletes the best possible development experiences, providing them with the best chance of reaching their maximum potential via academics through education, football and most importantly in developing their character to the fullest.
Staff within Right To Dream believe talent and excellence can be found anywhere, and its equality of opportunity, not talent, that is the main obstacle to discovery. So, their strategic model is designed to fit this simple yet powerful idea; a model which focuses on three elements in finding and nurturing potential:
- Football talent
- Cognitive ability
- Character and purpose
In relation to cognitive ability, Right to Dream are teaching individuals to play football and to be coaches themselves.
Teaching about the game rather than simply how to play the game. Thinking the game. We believe anyone who can teach the game will have the best chance of becoming the best possible player themselves.
This ethos of investing in people and working hard on their individual development is how Vernon has changed football, empowering players and people within the game to make a difference.
Breaking the mould
In December 2015, Right To Dream bought Danish Superliga club FC Nordsjaelland, with Vernon becoming chairman. It was the first time a European football club had been purchased by an African not-for-profit.
Why FC Nordsjaelland? The values and goals of FC Nordsjaelland are consistent with those of Right To Dream. Both have a proven track record of putting a lot of emphasis on talent development. FC Nordsjaelland, for example, has been recognized as one of Denmark’s leading clubs in youth development since the club was founded in 2003 (from the Farum Boldklub club) and also has a social vein, as does Right To Dream.
The acquisition would offer players from the Academy a pathway into European football, giving them exposure to a higher level of football and the opportunity to prove themselves.
After the takeover, FC Nordsjaelland also established a professional women’s team that secured back-to-back promotions and won the National Cup. The men’s team has finished in the top six in Denmark for the last five/six years despite playing, for the past three seasons, with the youngest team in Europe.
How is this done, one may ask? Well, one thing which separates Right To Dream/FC Nordsjaelland from the pack is that they operate the club as a not-for-profit organisation, working to create and run a sustainable business in which the profit is not for stockholder dividends.
Training methodology
FC Nordsjaelland’s approach to training is one which again sets the club apart from others, seeing training as an evolving learning process, guided by the same main principles and focusing on not only teaching players howto play the game, but also how to understand the game.
The training methodology is the same across the club, from under 13s to the first team, which in turn aids transition as individuals progress through the age groups.
FC Nordsjaelland have their game model written and represented in a digital book that breaks down the style of play into 8 phases, 4 attacking phases and 4 defensive phases, also including the transitions of the two moments.
We don’t have any drills. Not any single drill which is prepared for the coaches. We don’t have a book of drills that you have to do. Our periodisation, our tactical periodisation we do it from the style of playbook.
This game model was developed through an in-depth analysis of UEFA Champions Leagues games, this has lead to FC Nordsjaelland striving to reduce the complexity of the game and not choosing to train to all kinds of different situations in training but have selected the most important situations to train.
For example;
To win a game you need to score, many club teams build a style of play from how to defend. However FC Nordsjaelland see this as the wrong approach opting to focus on how they want to score. The data shows that 85% of all goals are being score in the box and that the closer the ball can be plaid to the goal the more clear cut chances are created.
So coaches work in granular detail on what should we do to create these chances? Where is our assist areas? How can we get into these assist areas etc.
All sessions are filmed from five different angles, allowing everyone to watch via a platform called Hudl. Coaches will ensure that regular feedback sessions are held with players, encouraging individuals to provide input in relation to their intentions and not the outcomes as staff look to develop cognitive ability and understanding of the players.
The future
The Right To Dream have recently secured a partnership with The Mansour Group, the Egyptian conglomerate investing €100m into the project with the view to accelerating Right To Dream’s plans to expand.
In 2022, Right To Dream will extend their academy model to Egypt, by offering a platform to discover talents and develop high performance athletes with a focus on education, following the same model as the successful academies in Ghana and Denmark.
Right To Dream is working towards shaping a different future for global football.
Tom Vernon says “We believe there can be a greater purpose-driven model in football where clubs take an active role in social change, rather than leaning on individual athlete-driven social consciousness. Our academies do exactly that and once Egypt is firmly established, we’ll set our sights on the UK. With our partners and our strong experienced team, we are hungry to do more for the growing elite sporting talent and educational achievements of children coming through our academies, to help them achieve their dreams”.
