On the face of it, FC Nordsjaelland seems a curious place for Michael Essien to start his coaching career.
He is a Champions League winner and a Chelsea great whose career also took him to Real Madrid, AC Milan, Lyon and, later, Indonesia and Azerbaijan – but not Scandinavia.
Nordsjaelland, on the other hand, are not even among the three biggest clubs in Denmark and play at a stadium slightly smaller than Luton Town’s.
It makes more sense, though, in the context of Nordsjaelland’s unique story. Since 2015 the club has been run by Englishman Tom Vernon, who established the renowned Right to Dream football academy in Essien’s native Ghana.
Vernon’s vision is for full integration between Nordsjaelland and Right to Dream; the latter provides a conveyor belt of prospects for the club, which in turn effectively funds the academy. A primary goal is to create better opportunities for African talent, including budding coaches such as Essien, 37.
“Tom Vernon knows Ghana and has known me since I was 18, so when we started talking, I thought the best decision was to come here, learn and share my experience with the young players,” Essien tells i. “You always have to start from somewhere when you want to learn. Here is the perfect environment to learn and [head coach] Flemming Pedersen has already been great with me, always asking me to voice my opinion.”
Vernon was a young coach himself, scouting Africa for Manchester United while setting up Right to Dream, when he first encountered the teenage Essien. They kept in loose contact as he became a global star and when thoughts turned to a post-playing career, Essien consulted Vernon, who was only too happy to help him study for his next coaching badge, the Uefa A Licence, at Nordsjaelland.
“He’s in that very top bracket of that [African] generation with some of the Arsenal and Chelsea boys who changed so much on the continent. He’s also a real cultural fit for our environment, and I always knew that,” says Vernon.
“He’s always been a quiet guy, but what he does say is straight to the point and he oozes a winner mentality. He’s got great insight and observations and then obviously so much relevant experience. He trains every day with the team, so a lot of what gets transferred is by the way he trains, and the decisions he makes on the pitch even in a small-sided game is such a rapid learning curve for young players.”
Although unusually high-profile, hiring Essien is one of Vernon’s more orthodox moves. At 19, he started Right to Dream from scratch, determined to offer a way out to severely disadvantaged young Ghanaians via a curriculum focused on education and character as well as sport. Having made the project Africa’s leading football talent factory, he then gathered enough financial backing to lead Right to Dream’s takeover of Nordsjaelland. The move turned the traditional parent-feeder club model on its head.
Vernon hoped to fill Nordsjaelland’s first team entirely with graduates from the club’s Danish and African academies, while building on the team’s first Superliga title in 2012. Broadly speaking, it has been a success. The Tigers had the youngest team in Europe last year, according to a study by the CIES Football Observatory, and 12 of the squad who featured in the club’s opening match of the season last month were home-grown. Recent products who have left for bigger stages include Andreas Olsen of Bologna, Mikkel Damsgaard at Sampdoria and Ghanaian Mohammed Kudus, now shining at Ajax following a €9m summer transfer.
Results-wise, they have finished in the top six in all but one season since the takeover but never higher than third. Spectators at Right to Dream Park get good value, however: their matches featured a league-high 3.14 goals per game last term, while Vernon cites statistical analysis that ranked them the fifth most attacking side in Europe. “That’s the philosophy and the model,” says Vernon. They have also made a profit every year, which goes back into Right to Dream.
More recently Nordsjaelland have tweaked the youth-first approach to incorporate some older heads. Essien is valuable on that front, and the trade-off is learning in an environment that has nurtured some of his compatriots’ coaching ambitions. Current Ghana manager CK Akonnor had a spell in charge of Right to Dream’s under-17s, while Otto Addo coached at Nordsjaelland before joining the staff at Borussia Dortmund.
“I’m inspired by the Ajax model where you see [Edwin] Van der Sar is the CEO, [Marc] Overmars is the sporting director and [Dennis] Bergkamp with the under-15s,” says Vernon. “African talent is so often overlooked in this regard. There is some incredible experience, insight and perspective if you are investing in African coaches that I think many people miss out on. For us it’s just an amazing opportunity.”
Vernon believes the African coaches he has worked with are motivated by a desire to help the next generation. “I never thought I would be a coach when I was playing,” says Essien. “But I feel now I have a lot to give to the younger generation coming up, so I took the decision to learn more about being a coach and to explore this pathway.”
These are boom times for footballers stepping into the dugout. Essien’s old team-mate Frank Lampard has been fast-tracked into the Chelsea hot-seat, while Real Madrid, Juventus, Manchester United and Arsenal all have former players of recent years in charge. Having just arrived in Denmark, Essien is not ready to contemplate a future job in the Premier League. “Right now my focus is on becoming the best coach I can be through education and my role at FCN,” he says. “Then the future will tell me which role is the best and right for me.”
Source: inews.co.uk