When Sadiq Ibrahim poked home the winner from close range against Colombia, his classmates and teachers, glued to the TV screen 8,465km away, leapt to their feet. Shouts of “Ayekoo (well done) Abu!” echoed around the Right to Dream, a football academy nestled in the Ghana countryside.
“Everybody in the academy is following the World Cup in India,” says Tom Vernon, founder and former Manchester United chief scout. “They’re going crazy for the team, especially for our three students.”
Along with ‘Abu’ — who opened the scoring at the ongoing Fifa Under-17 World Cup — rock-solid showings from the academy’s other two recruits, Gideon Mensah and Kudus Mohammed, have helped Ghana reach the knockout stage of a tournament they ruled during the 90s. Between 1991 to 1997 the Black Starlets reached the Cup finals four times, winning twice. In 1999, they were third. There were prodigious talents aplenty. But they vanished even quicker than they appeared.
The 1991 Golden Ball winner Nii Lamptey, hailed by Pele as his natural successor, was courted by clubs from the age of eight and played in Under-20 competitions at 13. He retired at 33, having played for 11 clubs in 10 countries spanning four continents.
In a 2009 interview, Lamptey said, “We’re in a state in Ghana… no club can pay you even $100 dollars a month. I have family. I have to buy clothes. I have to eat. Somebody pops up, “I have a club for you in India they will pay you £2,000 a month”. Do you think I will stop? I will go.”
Ishmael Addo, the 1999 Golden Boot winner, did just that. The striker, a revered figure in the country’s domestic league, played for East Bengal in 2008-09, scoring twice in four matches before being released.
It’s not a great look when a football association laments too many kids taking up the sport. Yet when Ghana Football Association executive Football Association executive Herbert Adika said “everybody wants to play football by force but all of us cannot be footballers”, there weren’t many disagreements.
Nearly 15,000 West African teenagers leave their homes every year to play football in Europe. Few make good on their dreams. Some are lured by corrupt “agents”, smuggled across the searing Sahara and discarded in the streets of Europe, resigned to selling fake designer bags as undocumented immigrants. Others are nabbed by academies and feeder teams affiliated with European clubs and often dumped like bad stocks.
Such exploitation and borderline-human trafficking inspired Vernon to set up Right to Dream in 1999. The then 19-year-old Englishman began by training some boys on a dust bowl in Ghana’s capital of Accra, moved to a residential model with grass pitches in 2010 and later to a $2.5mn purpose-built facility just outside capital Accra and on the banks of the Volta.
“During my days (working as a coach) in the Ghana Premier League, I felt something was missing. I saw the kids playing in the streets and thought, ‘Why isn’t there a structure around them?’ Then, we started really basic but gradually built up,” Vernon told the Indian Express. “We started as a non-residential facility, and then we began feeding some of them, helping with the school fees and grew along the line with support.”
Each academic year sees 25,000 ten and eleven-year-olds sweat it out in the trials — known as ‘justify your inclusion’ tournaments or simply ‘justify’. After academic and athletic evaluation, 20 make it to the Cambridge-accredited academy where they receive football coaching, IGCSE schooling and full scholarship. Some leave at 15 to start ninth grade in the United States while others stay back until 18 before turning pros.
“Most of the kids are from less than $2 a day families and can’t come to the trials. We literally go village to village, in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria,” says Vernon. The criteria for the scouts is simple enough. “Find a kid bright enough to get into Harvard and good enough to play in the Champions
Vernon, who admits a sense of disillusionment with European clubs such as former employers Manchester United, believes the future Lampteys and Addos of Ghana should stay in school. “Boys at that young age shouldn’t be dropping out, because it is tough to cope later. But a lot of people see West Africa as a big source of young players. Ajax, Feyenoord and Red Bull come to Africa with hopes of unearthing the next big star using the flawed European model,” says Vernon, before explaining the said model.
“When you go into the developing world, there are even bigger moral and ethical questions about whether you can bring a kid to an environment, show him these hopes of a big future and if he doesn’t perform for one or two years then you ask him to go back to his village. You’ve taken him out of the social structures, his school when two weeks ago he had this hope of Europe, training like a professional athlete. The game in general needs to look at itself and ask itself if it’s doing the right thing with young players.”
Michael Essien remains the anomaly. Before he won Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League titles with Chelsea, Essien was picked up by the Ghanaian club Liberty Professionals, which functions primarily on talent export. The midfielder attracted scouts at the 1999 under-17 World Cup and was offered a contract by Manchester United but couldn’t join because he was underage. He then joined the feeder club Antwerp and went on to play in the top divisions of France, England, Spain and Italy.
Essien was literally one in a million. However, in a country which perceives football as not a sport but an escape route, everyone read that Essien was earning £70,000 a week and wanted to try their luck. According to the Ghana FA, there are 240 clubs and 20,000 players in Accra alone. Young hopefuls post their videos and contact number on social media, resulting in rich pickings for the roadside academies and agents.
“The deregulation of agents is one of the worst moves made under Sepp Blatter’s administration. There are a lot of unscrupulous guys who purely are trying to make a quick buck, who will spend a little money to impress parents, players and take money from useless clubs.”
Vernon decided to expand, to prevent his graduates from leaving for such small European clubs. Two years ago, backed by investors, he took over Danish team FC Nordsjaelland, a rare, reverse case of an academy investing in a club.
“We wanted the club with a strong economy. Also, FC Nordsjaelland have one of the five youngest teams in the world and have been open-minded. Our academy players get foreign exposure and Danish players get to observe the challenges and issues in Ghana,” says Vernon.
“Playing with the European kids have made me familiar to their style of playing,” Ibrahim Sadiq told reporters in India. “And without the help of my coaches and other backroom staff, I don’t think I will be where I am today”.
Of that first batch of 15 kids in 1999, three played for the national team and five played in Europe professionally. Since then, there has been a string of graduates-turned-international and professional footballers. Vernon’s proud of them, but satisfaction comes from elsewhere.
“We found a kid almost in the Sahara desert and he might get into Stanford next year. That’s what keeps us driving. Our student-athletes have attended top schools in Europe and America on full scholarships. The best part is they want to give back. Many graduates return to coach in Ghana and Denmark.”
Ghana international and Chicago Fire forward David Accam — one of the six graduates playing in the MLS — donated an artificial football pitch which has become a tourist attraction for the dirt-ground regulars.
Altruism alone doesn’t pay bills though. Vernon admits that you need amazing stories to attract sponsors, and sponsors to take the model from a man teaching a handful of kids on a dust pitch to an operation spread across three continents; a journey which may have ruffled a few feathers along the way.
“When you come in as a foreigner, there’s a degree of skepticism around. ‘Who is the guy? What is his agenda?’ You can get perceived as an agent or somebody trying to take advantage,” says Vernon. “But we have proven time and time again that we have the best interest of a kid in mind. We have also set up the first female academy on the continent. It’s about creating role models. Be it professional footballers or students, we want them to come back and leverage their position to make things better in Africa.”