The what the why the how of Football Academy...

Football Academy- The what, why and how? on the Art and Science of this undertaking…By Elvis J. Goes

This document should serve as a starting point to simplify the process of starting a football academy from scratch. Over the last 30 years I have worked for different companies in the field of physical medicine, Sports clubs, including owning my consulting business as a sports development specialist.

I must say most of my knowledge about sports centers, sports facilities and sports training initially came from United Sates from personal experience of participating in college sports, semi pro, youth football as well as utilizing the sports community centers. My desire to learn more about sports and in particular the finer intricacies of top athletes as well as football lead me to successfully completing by USSF highest level of coaching certification as well as the Sports conditioning certification.

The last couple of decades I have helped design and build several sports centers in India working with an architectural firm called Collage Design as a sports consultant. I have also, designed and build my own sports center in collaboration with the Chowgule College of Arts & science in Goa, India and NGV in Bangalore, India. 

Every Sports center is different based on the specific needs of the owners, institution, and sometimes based on consultants perception of designing these modalities as revenue models to make them viable and sustainable. You do not want white elephants as you see in developing countries as well as developed countries when government is involved in sports infrastructure without a thorough thought to revenue streams to sustain it in the long run.

Over the last 8 years I have been working and living in Portugal, where I operate a football academy program called “International Football Academy de Portugal” in collaborations with local clubs as well I consult on how to build, equip and run physiotherapy centers.

During this time in Portugal I have had the opportunity to attend coaching education programs with SL Benfica, Sporting Clube de Portugal and Porto FC. The Sporting Football Clube Academy in Alcochete, Portugal and SL Benfica Football Academy located in Seixal, Portugal are two of the most renowned academies in Portugal.  I have had a first hand opportunity to explore their infrastructure and setup along with their ground breaking football methodology and processes on how these well organized institutes work and function.

I make my recommendations and share these practical ideas based on my knowledge as a businessperson, sports consultant, sports trainer, football coach, and marketing & promotion specialist of sports medicine equipment.

After carefully studying all the functionalities and modalities of a good sports academy I wanted to put a simple checklist of ideas. The important objective is to guide future sports promoters in developing countries where sports academies as well as specific football academies are rare and new emerging businesses. 

Here are some thoughts and ideas to get you started and to present to your architectural firm based on your needs. However, today there are several cookie cutter architectural plans of sports centers with all the modalities defined to make things much easier. As previously stated every situation is different and requires some custom designs and modifications to meet the local needs including cultural differences in Asia verses the north Americas or European way of life.

The finer details of the design will be based on many questions and details such as:

·     How many people or athletes will you accommodate at a given time?

·     What will be the capacity of the stadium?

·     How many dressing rooms’ do you intends to have based on the number of football grounds?

·     Will you use the fields to play league games or just for the academy? Are you planning to incorporate a dormitory? For how many?

·     Will your football academy modalities such as the restaurant, gym, Spa and physiotherapy be open to outside users or will you open your football fields for rental?

·     Do you need a separate officials changing room different from the coaches room? Will you have spa center as a coed facility or will it have two different sections for men and women?

All these and many more questions will have to be answered as part of your checklist before you complete your initial design and start building the infrastructure to meet your needs and that of your future customers.

For any good football (sports) academy to be successful one must have the following four main components:

1.   The infrastructure or what I call the facilities

2.   The qualified personnel (instructors, coaches, administrators, the service providers etc.)

3.   The operational technology and training equipment to support this objectives

4.   The correct psychosocial-demographics and football environment for its success

I would like to further amplify these four main components in order to simplify the process for better understanding, should you use this white paper as your guidelines for the implementation and successful operation of a football academy (Sports Academy)

1.   The Infrastructure (facilities) This building or facility must have these key components as part of the process;

·     The football fields (two numbers if you want an FIFA accreditation- artificial or natural depending on the country or location)

·     The football fields or the small stadium must have all the necessary amenities such as dressing rooms with the bathrooms attached for home team as well as the away-team and a section for the football coaches to share the last minute notes on the board before the team enters the field.

·     The football field must also have all the other necessary amenities such as referees room, the media room and many other services which each home club has to provide, if your field will be also used to play league games as most of the academies do.

·     The Dormitory with proper amenities with bathrooms and showers etc.

·     A cafeteria with dining section as well as a well organized and functional “Serve Safe” kitchen process for cooking and serving the meals.

·     A large fitness center with all the necessary equipment for doing sports related training or what modern fitness calls it functional training modalities

·     A study hall with lecture room or rooms with proper audio video capabilities

·     Sports science center with testing and evaluation modalities

·     A physical medicine section with treatment rooms, massage tables and rooms, and physiotherapy modalities. , With a hydrotherapy pool.

·     A spa section with swimming pool, steam bath or a Jacuzzi are optional but can play an integral part of the rehab process or implementing a very successful program for the players.

2.   The qualified personnel:

·     The most important part of any academy is to have a knowledgeable director of operations who understands and oversees all the components and has a sound knowledge of sports as well as HRM with human behavioral competences.

·     One must have qualified and certified fitness trainers, certified and experienced football coaches as well as masseur, physiotherapist, nutritionist, sports psychologist and consulting orthopedic. (Many of these individual can be outsourced or brought in-house depending on the level, size and success of your operation)

·     The other supporting staff would include the cleaners, ground and equipment maintenance crew as well as the administrative staff to support the operations including but not limiting to sales and marketing department of the operation.

3.    The technologies and Equipment:

·     The main technology used in most of the football or sports academies are very similar to the technologies used in colleges or schools. They are designed to maintain player’s personal data, billing and tracking, historical data and medical information of the athletes, testing and evaluations as well as progress reports.

·     There are several software program used by the likes of SL Benfica and Sporting here in Portugal, which not only does your day to day tracking and planning but it also, has built in tools for football season planning and recommendations for the coaching staff to know which part football component they have overworked as well as which part they have least worked on. Along with training sessions and recommendations.

·     Further more several football specific technologies are currently used to teach and enhance the knowledge of the players or athletes thru video analysis and feedback for improvements. Including continuing football educational tools for coaching staff as well as players such as found on www.thefootballstop.com

·     Other training equipment such as GPS or KPI systems are used for data collection and human performance enhancements tools. These too require qualified individual or consultants to come train and support the staff deliver a flawless and smooth operations and services to the athletes.

·     Fitness and football training equipment to do a comprehensive and effective football as well as ground based functional fitness training.

·     Including Physiotherapy department as injuries and sports go hand in hand and with proper preventive measures using EMG systems like the ones in Europe we can identify the muscles or biomechanics imbalances and correct them preventing future injuries to the athletes. 

4.   The football environment or the psychosocial demographics in that country of setup:

·     The whole process can not function in an vacuum but a has to have the correct football environment in that country or the state, such as the youth leagues, the correct competition within each state of district or village and connected with proper unbiased scouting program and vertical promotion.

·     The passion, the love and following for the game of football are undeniably universal. However, in the absence of these characteristics the academy will not survive and the best-run operations will slowly fade away as they are happening in India, China and USA at the moment. (I gave India as an example since I am closely related to that country as well as know its football ecosystem- correct me if I am wrong-Also in the recent years there is flood of youth from these countries who can afford are pursuing football outside their own environment with a hope or striking gold)

·     If there is no proper eco-system for competition and football environment available then one must be created such as local football league system, trips to play practice game in state or out of state or out of country. (International exposure with IFAPT partnership- you will able to bridge that gap and provide you a road map for these ideas to be implemented)

·     Last but not least the youth players must able to see their senior peers perform as well as have a road map and something to look forward to. The objective such as knowing that there is a partnership with a Pro club or an opportunity for tryouts to become a future professional. If these opportunities are not available the Academy must register a team in the competitive football league and create this avenue (as allowed in all European and North American countries).

Once the top four objectives are in place or the correct football environment is assessed we must move to develop a system and a process for the next key step in the development of the footballers and the game of football.

In order to develop the next generation athlete or footballer or for that matter any finished product one must start with the “Raw materials” and hence the manufacturing of footballers has these three components in the production process such as:

1.   The scouting and finding the raw materials or finding the talent

2.   The Long term proven and tested process of players development- the manufacturing process (coaching and refining the talent or simply known as the Art and Science of training)

3.   The management, marketing and sales of the finished products

I will briefly discuss the above three processes of manufacturing top quality footballers with some proven and tested European methodologies as used by top European football academies here in Portugal and Spain.

1.    The Scouting: talent search is one of the most important technical and objective components of the process. It’s subjectively debated or discussed among the final selection committee members. This requires a process where by the scout or the agent reviews several games away and home of the athlete considered and then further evaluating the athlete in the four major categories such as: e.g. SL Benfica, Sporting Clube de Portugal and Porto does it well.

i.    The Physical or Fitness attributes (for e.g. looking at a player when he is 10 or 12 years of age or even younger at times and saying this will be the next star is like finding a needle in a haystack. However when a scout is trained to spot the key components and closely monitor with correlation with the parents genetics and background of the athlete, it’s like science with a proven result mostly but not always. There is an old saying among the football scouts in the world, “if he has a football brain, then rest can be developed”. I think this is based on part art and not entirely science.

ii.    The technical attributes or capabilities: Here too there is a specific checklist such as the athlete’s abilities with ball handling qualities in dribbling, passing, receiving, shooting, heading and movement with and without the ball many other technical skills. These are mainly focused on the players abilities and how well he stands out against the other best in his age group

 iii.    The tactical understanding: at an early stage this is a hard one to find in players but if a scout have a keen eye to spot the decisions making abilities of this young athlete you will see that top players has a vision to see the gaps and can somehow see something which others do not see for example the space to receive and pass or the movements in correlation to his teammates and opponents. These are just early signs of talent and there is a checklist, which scouts are trained to see which of these components he has.

iv.    The behavioral attributes: There are many early signs to see if the Child has what it takes to be the next top level athlete or not there is a very detailed list of attributes which scouts can look for in any player they have short listed for a potential recruiting or selection. To name a few of these traits such as the aggressiveness or the willingness to engage in a battle with another opponent or standing out of the crowd. Another early trait that you see in the top athletes is their love of that sports or the enthusiasm they have when they approach that sport or game and the early leadership qualities they display on the field.

2.   The Proven system or processes and methodology to develop footballers: (I call it’ the curricula of Art and Science of training):

i.    Any good system of development has a systematic and series of well orchestrated steps of development from A to Z. This is based on a progression such as teaching a youth to read and write from childhood to adulthood or best teaching a child to do complex mathematics problems start with basics and take them to complex equations. Every education system has to have a progressive comprehensive curricula and this is nothing different to football development. For example two of the most successful football academies in Portugal thrive under all of the above conditions to continuously produce some of the best footballer every year worth about 100 million euros or more.

ii.    The age appropriate as well as level specific steps that must be followed diligently to see a good progression of the athlete. Sometimes the process must be accelerated for some athletes so they are not bored out of this profession and make it challenging and exciting to maintain their interest as well give them a healthy competition. Not all athletes move on the same scale and some will progress quite faster than others and hence within an academy there are tiers which segregates the athletes and are moved up or down within that system.

iii.    Proven training drills and exercises for every age group with an underlining philosophy as well as a systematic system of play (4-3-3)or style of play or model of the game as part of the development.  (Portugal follows this to the tee with a program called “Long term players development”) we have captured the philosophy, principles and methodology with drills and exercises on our platform at www.thefootballstop.com (Also IFAPT can provide the expertise in the early stages of the academy to develop a core group of coaches and your own native Football TD to carry it forward)

 3.   The management, marketing and sale of the athletes and finished product:

 i.    Every player has needs, these needs are physical, emotional, as well as financial, these needs has to be met from a physiological to psychological point of view. There needs to be experts who are constantly keeping the players in physical and mental fitness. We all have different kinds of problems and so does the athletes we work with. Most of the athletes have one inherent problem we see here in Europe among the top youth athletes and that is the power of money. If the athletes are not thought and trained in the social and civic duties as well as society based principles and values then there is a greater chance of loosing them to bad vices once they get a taste of money.

ii.    Apart from that the players once reached to the maturity of finished products they must be guided as well as managed with multiple options for advancing their careers what we call is “players placement” or counseling to find a job or to guide them in other career options. More than often many players around the world are discarded as defective products; this is the ugly side of football business that no one gets to see most of the time. The media and the promoters only want us to see the good side not the bad side of things.

iii.     The final step is sometimes is not over even after placing the players in good teams. The process of management does not stop there as they might get even better than where they are today or worse they might suffer and injury or simply rise above the rest and needs help in negotiating their contracts or getting endorsements and other lucrative deals. This means they need help from experts, their agents who represent them, as they trust that they will do what is right for them. This is a very sacred trust worthy partnership and must be given a great deal of importance.  However, more often we see its neglected by bad agents or very well done by top agents (sports management firms) as they know that this is something very important for their survival as well.

 In my closing remarks I wanted to revisit this point:

The important component of any academy is the “environment” (country) where it operates and the connectivity it has to higher competition as well as the ecosystem and process: I want to give a few scenarios and some food for thought as you read this:

The American Soccer Academy: In USA there is a famous sports (soccer) academy in Bradenton, Florida the IMG football (Sports) academy, which has fantastic program its costly and only the boys and girls who can afford can go there. We know the first failure of this academy to develop world class footballers, when we only talk about the highly privilege footballers or athletes. The footballers as we know usually comes from all walks of life, but the top footballers mostly come from tough neighborhoods, tough financial circumstances, the ones who are very hungry and willing to succeed at all costs. Not to say that many athletes coming from well to do families do not succeed especially in Tennis or Golf and other sports including soccer.

The IMG produces a lot of top soccer players for US Colleges but no one has heard of any top soccer player from IMG playing in European top leagues or a household name. There are several players playing in the MLS, USL and PDL and one cannot deny the fact of proper training and systematic soccer program. This comparison is done only for sake of very subjective argument, to say that Benfica or Sporting academy which I researched can continuously produce top athletes with less facilities, less science, less money and everything else as compared to IMG in USA. Then the question is why not IMG? I want to give a few examples below about the challenges as well as the opportunities that exists in the world of football…

The African Opportunity: The second most important environmental factor which we have seen over and over again among the African players who come to Europe they are the best talent in Africa when they arrive here but they are not the best in Europe. They become better over the next few years as they learn the Comprehensive European methodology the high intensity decision-making under pressure model of training. They are exposed to the correct stimulus of European football world. They are also, when exposed to better football training curricula, science, and other countless modalities in top clubs and academies here in Europe they simply thrive and go on to become some of the most cherished players of our times...

The Asian Assessment: This assessment is also very relevant to the Asian players we see from China, Indonesia, middle east as well as from India. They are the best from their country but not good enough for the top European leagues as well as top world football leagues here in Europe. I must add here that there are biases, which exists in every situation such as the players who are scouted from China, South Korea and other South Asian countries are much more inclined to succeed then the ones who pay to come here.  Hence it’s important for the football developing countries like India, Indonesia and other Asian countries to give the top players from their respective academies an early opportunity to go train in EU or better if you have the correct environment then implement the proper curricula in your own academy. As a word of caution to all the international traveling and football academies such as our own “International Football Academy de Portugal – IFAPT” must not misguide the parents as well as the athletes about their future here in Europe but inspire them to come and experience this European culture, the European football environment, as well as the best football curricula they will ever be exposed to… it’s a game changer for many of the youths we interact but its not for everyone.

In Conclusion…Here are some stats to ponder: The number one continent to supply footballers in UEFA leagues are from western Europe apart from the western European countries the second most players come from East European countries, Followed by African, South and central American and a very small insignificant percentage from the North American or Asian or the middle Eastern are featured in this category of regions to produce top world class footballers.

These are thoughts and ideas I wanted to share as you plan to build your own football academy or a football program and pursue your dream to build the next Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo…

There are several points I would like to touch as part of a larger picture which are critical to the overall growth and success of any sports academy:

·     The existence of a well organized youth football league in that country of operation

·     The existence of economics to support the growth of that sports

·     The competitive and professional football leagues for the players to strive to be the best.

·     One very important but not often spoken about the historical trends of the players who have gone before them and the doors they have opened or the international exposure they bring to their home leagues because of the past success of that country on international football fields … I hope this will give you an overall idea as part of the starting point for your own business plan with all details and financials viabilities to start a football academy as well as the core components you will need to be successful venture…

The Next main step is very important and integral part of “Long term players development” (LTPD) Here we can explore all the finer elements of progressive development the macro and micro cycles of training and the 10 months planning and scheduling, that has to be considered as part of the development.

One can find comprehensive football information along with other relevant information about football player’s development including mental training ideas and age appropriate recommendations at www.thefootballstop.com & www.coachingsoccerguide.com

If any questions please send your inquires to [email protected]

?Good luck and wish you much success… By Elvis J. Goes