Inside the talent factory behind Kudus and Adingra – which is now expanding to the U.S.

“Trust me, I see myself playing and scoring some good goals here,” says 17-year-old Prince Amoako Junior, as he gazes out across FC Nordsjaelland’s Right to Dream Park.

Fresh from scoring a hat-trick against Brondby’s under-19s, the player known as Prince is addressing comparisons with Brighton & Hove Albion’s Ivory Coast international winger Simon Adingra — and the likelihood of his following in the footsteps of Adingra and West Ham United midfielder Mohammed Kudus, a fellow Ghanaian.

When two of African football’s biggest stars have arrived on the world stage via the exact pipeline Prince is now flowing through, who can blame him for believing?

Once he turns 18 next year, the winger is expected to become the 32nd graduate to transfer directly from Right to Dream — a free-of-charge student-athlete programme first established in Ghana by ex-Manchester United scout Tom Vernon — to Nordsjaelland (FCN), a Danish Superliga club based in Farum, north of Copenhagen.

Since Right to Dream purchased FCN in 2015, their cultures, youth development policy and playing styles have become fully intertwined.

Between 2018 and 2023, FCN awarded the highest percentage of minutes to under-20 players of any senior club in world football (37 per cent). They have brought in more than €90million (£77m, $98m) in transfer fees from deals involving Right to Dream Ghana graduates in the past four years.

In total, Right to Dream Ghana graduates account for 876 senior appearances and 128 goals for FCN since 2016, with the strike rates of Kamaldeen Sulemana (now with Southampton of the Premier League) and Ernest Nuamah (Lyon, in the French top flight) earning them big moves within a year.

Ibrahim Osman, 19, to Brighton (£19million), 22-year-old midfielder Mohamed Diomande to Scotland’s Rangers (£4.5m) and 21-year-old Lasso Coulibaly to French side Auxerre (£2m) were the latest trio to fly the nest this summer.

Next in line are first-team regulars Adamo Nagalo and Mario Dorgeles. Araphat Mohammed — nicknamed ‘Young Kudus’ due to his similar build and gait — Levy Nene, Caleb Yirenkyi, Stephen Acquah and Issaka ‘Baba’ Seidu are primed to take their places as the latest graduates to FCN’s senior side.

That conveyor belt is why Prince states his dream of playing for Chelsea with the flippancy of a young man who views it as more of a premonition than a hoped-for goal.

How have Right to Dream and FCN created such a smooth transition for African teenagers?

The biggest differentiator is Right to Dream’s International Academy (IA), a touring team comprised of the best players from their academies in Ghana and Denmark between 16 and 18 — the latter being the age at which players from outside the EU become eligible to sign for clubs under the rules of FIFA, world football’s governing body.

Former Chelsea, Manchester United and Spain midfielder Juan Mata, training with FCN as a free agent at age 36, believes what they are doing is years ahead of anything he has seen.

Right to Dream also now has the means to expand, after Man Capital, the UK-based investment arm of the Egyptian family conglomerate Mansour Group, took majority control in 2021 as part of a $100million investment. The Mansour Group has a net worth of around $6bn. It bought an Egyptian academy last year, and also owns Egyptian professional women’s team Tut FC and San Diego FC, an MLS expansion franchise set to begin play in 2025.

FCN are not-for-dividend and Right to Dream is not-for-profit, with all transfer and commercial income reinvested in its academies. The Mansour family will operate San Diego FC with the same altruistic values Right to Dream was built upon.

Just as they have in Ghana, Denmark and Egypt, Right to Dream will offer six-year scholarship programmes to U.S. kids free of charge — making San Diego the only MLS club to do so — which will provide a dual pathway to professional football and universities in the United States and UK.

It held the first trials in the U.S. over two days this week, with 2,000 children registering to take part, a handful of whom are likely to be involved in Right to Dream’s 2030 international academy.

The Athletic joined the players during their five-week stay at FCN to learn some of the secrets and the secrets and the science of their success.

---

Bridging the gap between the academy and first team

In his role with Manchester United, Vernon saw many talented African teenagers sold to European teams and parachuted into environments that neither understood nor adapted to players who had never left their home continent.

Many of them failed.

When Vernon went to Ghana aged 19 to work as a coach at Hearts of Oak, a top-flight professional club in the capital Accra, he began to learn that most Europeans who tried to create something in Africa did so with a ‘neo-colonial mindset’ where they reaped the benefits but did not care for what fell by the wayside.

Inspired by young players he met with huge ambition but starved of opportunity, he believed that a student-athlete programme — similar to the U.S. college system — could be transformational, as it would also give players a safety net in the form of education that the English academies’ churn does not.

In 1999, he and his wife moved to Ghana and got the concept off the ground by housing the first 16 boys and offering coaching roles to students on their gap year. It started to gain traction and in 2010 they opened their first facility, before expanding to run the only residential girls’ football academy in the world.

Vernon believed the missing piece of the jigsaw was a partner club in a mid-level European country that would become the natural gateway.

In Denmark, with FCN’s youth-focused model, he found a kindred spirit. With help from investors, he bought the Danish club in 2015, aligning the methods of both academies and implementing a distinct style of play.

The West African players started making biannual visits from the age of 13, staying up to three months on a travel visa, but it was the launch of the IA in the same year that proved a game changer.

Vernon knew there had to be a transition period before the players moved to FCN.

In April 2017, he mixed the best players from the Ghanaian and Danish academies for an eight-game trip to take on Premier League and Championship sides. Kudus and Mikkel Damsgaard, now of Premier League side Brentford, were two of that first crop, which set the template for the five weeks in Denmark that Prince and his team-mates are currently enjoying.

“The puzzle was: how do we adjust our collective style of play to make it easier for the African individual quality to get into FCN’s first team? Get the more collective game model integrated into the academy,” says Right to Dream technical director Flemming Pedersen.

It is Prince’s fifth visit but this time he is mainly training with the FCN first team as they look to integrate him ahead of his potential permanent move next year, when he turns 18.

“It feels really close,” says Prince. “There is nothing different at all with the first team. You do the same thing, so once you transition it becomes really easy. It is the same place — just in a different country. You’ve got to learn the principles and the style of play, but that starts at 10. We have analysis classes every week where you learn what the team wants. You have to catch up quickly but people told me, ‘Just do you’.”

Ian Yates, head of talent and pathways, knows how difficult the jump is.

“In every sport I’ve worked in, the biggest fallout is in junior to senior, as they either struggle with the step up in intensity or there is a lack of opportunity,” he says.

“The football industry is comfortable with attrition. If they (young players) aren’t making it, they’ll be moved out and someone will be moved in. (But) We’re uncomfortable with the concept of attrition, as it means we have not fulfilled our duty to that kid.

“It shouldn’t be a jump, it should be a step across. The International Academy acts as that bridge.”

Planning players’ entry into the first team is part of the remit for head of recruitment Anders Jensen. His task when signing players from outside the academy system is about “making sure we don’t block the path”. He has colour-coded lists of every age group, denoting their position and expected level, so he and his staff can plan a space for them.

It is why the departure of left-back Martin Frese to Italian top-flight club Verona this summer did not require a replacement signing. The space created by Frese leaving was kept open for 18-year-old Seidu, already the fastest sprinter in the squad, to be promoted from the IA.

There is nothing to stop a club copying Right to Dream’s strategy, but how do you replicate a brand that has spent 25 years building its reputation to the point where a place at its academy is so prized?

Around 100,000 boys and girls aged 10 take part in nationwide trials in both Ghana and Egypt. Right to Dream’s group head of scouting Jeremy Seethal and his small team have had to become specialists at grassroots level, with each intake filtered down to a squad of around 15.

Some players are not mature enough to move to the residential academy initially so join later, but identifying talent at such a young age means scouts are trained to envisage long-term potential. Seethal credits staff longevity and the choice to move scouts around the three academies for why they have been successful.

FCN are also producing local Scandinavian talent, recruiting heavily from Norway at age 16, for example, to complement their existing talents. Striker Conrad Harder, who is Danish, looks likely to be a future big sale. His physique and direct style are reminiscent of a young Erling Haaland. Norwegian right-winger Sindre Walle Egeli has just beaten the Manchester City star’s goal record at international youth level.

While they need to have some experience in the side as well to remain competitive, they look for the right characters to play mentoring roles rather than just players at peak age.

It is why FCN’s first team tend to operate in three- or four-year cycles, with an addition of about nine players from both academies kick-starting the process. As a team matures together, they are expected to challenge for the Superliga title before teams from bigger leagues inevitably sign them. FCN then replenish their ranks with more Right to Dream graduates.

Vernon, who stepped down as chief executive in March but remains a strategic advisor, has had to deal with bumps in the road.

In 2018, it was revealed Manchester City had become financial backers at the beginning of that decade, making annual contributions of around £1million as part of a 10-year partnership. This granted them first refusal on players at age 18. FIFA began an investigation into potential third-party ownership.

Right to Dream states it removed that clause after the purchase of FCN, which is why it faced no punishment, and adds that no Right to Dream player has ever been, or ever will be, pressured into a move they do not want.

City were found to have breached rules regarding under-18s, though, after graduates George Davies and Dominic Oduro, the latter a Ghanaian, told Danish media they had played in trial games while younger than 18. They avoided a transfer ban but were fined £315,000.

Twelve graduates signed for City at a time when there was no integrated club such as FCN, but none fulfilled their potential and were farmed out on loan. Right to Dream did not feel City were doing enough to create a pathway and, after the purchase of FCN, no player has moved on to the serial Premier League champions.

The only case of a player alleging pressure came in 2019 when Kelvin Ofori, who now plays for Spartak Trnava in Slovakia, claimed he was left out of the Ghana Under-17 squad for the age group’s World Cup after not signing with FCN. Right to Dream has refuted his allegations for years and believes the number of graduates who join FCN and successfully integrate speaks for itself.

Whether or not they leave, the goal is one day to regularly field a team of exclusively homegrown players.

Right to Dream submitted an under-16 team into an under-17 competition at this year’s Gothia Cup, the world’s largest youth tournament, because they had won the competition seven times in a row. This suggests they will not struggle to meet that target in a decade.

---

Integrating cultures

“Let’s have a big cheer for the birthday boy, Jamal,” says IA head coach Ben Garner.

The centre-back has just turned 17 and he receives a warm cheer from his team-mates, but the seating arrangement is noticeable.

The Scandinavian boys are all sitting in a group and the African lads are also sat together.

“I noticed it at our first meeting,” says Garner, who sought advice from Dr Pippa Grange, a psychologist who was instrumental in transforming the culture of the England national team along with Gareth Southgate and spent two years at FCN identifying how to create one unifying culture.

“She said we have to let it happen organically. You can’t force it, and it is more powerful if it comes from them. Slowly, you can see them interacting more and more. The dressing room gets louder every day.”

Mario Dorgeles is now at ease in the first team with 55 appearances, but he remembers when some of his African team-mates were too apprehensive to speak to the Danish players and would instead go through him as a mediator.

English is the common language spoken in the group but they have character classes in which both teams teach the others about their own culture and language, which has helped players socialise and understand each other better.

“When we were in the gym, they played their music and we were thinking, ‘What the f**k is this?’,” laughs Dorgeles. “So we played ours, and then we started to vibe. Go into any of our phones now and you will see a mixture of both on our playlists.”

To help the group learn more about each other, Scandinavian players travel first to Ghana to better appreciate the backgrounds of their new team-mates.

They visit some of the players’ home villages and there is an entertainment night in which every player has to perform a song, dance or freestyle keepy-uppies. This trip includes panna — a street-football game — basketball, an art museum, a ceramics class and a canoeing trip.

The IA schedule is full-on. This particular block consists of daily gym sessions, training on the first-team pitch and six matches.

They drew 2-2 with a more experienced Lyngby side, outplayed Hamburg B 2-1, hammered Brondby 4-1 and face Malmo next week before travelling to La Manga in Spain for five weeks. There, they will face top Spanish and English teams. The African players will then spend time in Ghana and Egypt before a tournament in Japan before Christmas.

Garner says: “We can provide real stretch and challenge. They get the life experience of travelling and learning about the local area, while still focusing on their studies. It helps develop well-rounded people.”

It is the mantra of Right to Dream that the players see every morning as they walk down the stairs to their changing rooms: “Don’t expect to accomplish your dreams if you are not willing to help others accomplish theirs.”

Players and staff members all shake hands before training begins, and there are six rules printed on a board reminding them of the principles FCN are built on. But there is also proof of what they can achieve: a life-size mural of Damsgaard’s free-kick goal against England in the semi-finals of Euro 2020, a list of every FCN graduate and match-worn shirts, including Andreas Skov Olsen’s Denmark one from the 2022 World Cup group-stage game against Tunisia.

The money from his €6million move to Italy’s Bologna in 2019 was used to completely refurbish and rebrand the academy, building a fully-fitted gym, two new changing rooms and a couple of analysis rooms.

The dimensions of the boys’ and girls’ facilities are identical, as are the heavy number of staff for each team. There are 29 of them for the 79 female academy players, which is why individual and small-group training is such a big part of their approach.

FCN’s women won the domestic double last season, and a huge new canvas of them has just been plastered on the wall.

They have also produced the Danish women’s player of the year in Everton midfielder Kathrine Moller Kuhl. But while female CEO Trine Hesselund Hopp Moller has championed the girls’ academy, Princess Marfo is the only female to have moved from Right to Dream Ghana to FCN — later being sold to California-based Bay FC in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), the sport’s top flight in the United States.

Right To Dream has a different approach in the women’s game in the U.S. — San Diego Wave have built a strong following since joining the NWSL as an expansion team in 2022, so it is aiming to collaborate rather than compete after the purchase of San Diego FC.

“We have very good coaches but the way the players act together and learn together cannot be bought with money,” says Pedersen.

---

The Right to Dream journey and how it shapes players

In Yopougon, a suburb of Ivory Coast’s biggest city Abidjan, a 10-year-old Mario Dorgeles assumed a different identity: Messi.

It is what locals would shout when he passed, even if they had not personally seen the left foot and dribbling ability that was famed on the local sand pitches.

“My parents had never seen me play until I played for the (under-23) national team in March because I have been away from so young,” says Dorgeles. “When I played against France, they watched on TV and were so proud. I said, ‘I have been telling you guys I’m good!’.”

Now 19, he’s a midfielder channelling Manchester City and Belgium star Kevin De Bruyne. Dorgeles has cemented himself as a regular starter having moved to FCN from Right to Dream in 2022.

Dorgeles watched Kudus grow up before him. The younger age groups would leave their dormitories to watch the senior games and debate who would be the next one to leave for Denmark. FCN’s matches are also shown on a Monday with an update on what every Right to Dream graduate had achieved at the weekend.

The big-money sales and glittering careers are why Right to Dream has become a well-known name in football — 48 per cent of Right To Dream Ghana graduates earn professional contracts but another 42 per cent receive scholarships at U.S. and UK institutions thanks to their school being recognised by the Cambridge International Examination.

There are dozens more stories of people whose lives have been transformed.

Seethal regularly deals with young players who have experienced trauma and severe deprivation. Seventy per cent of Right to Dream’s Ghanaian students come from families who earn less than two dollars a day.

In 2003, James C Nortey, now head of academy care and culture at Right to Dream, was a 10-year-old boy who boxed in front of crowds to earn for his family from the bets they would place.

He was not a gifted enough footballer to win a place at Right to Dream, but he turned up at the academy induction day regardless. When the roll call reached a goalkeeper’s name and there was silence, he opportunistically said he was the player in question.

It quickly became clear that he was not a goalkeeper at all, but they loved his attitude so much that they gave him a place anyway.

Twenty-one years later, he is giving back.

Dorgeles says he grew up neither poor nor rich and that hard work was instilled into him by his parents, but the first dream for his career is not about goals or trophies. It is about his community.

“Never forget where you came from,” he says. “The big thing I want to do is give back to the less fortunate; build pitches and academies — help them live their dream too.”

Garner has found the boys to be far more mature than those he worked with in England.

Moving away from home at such a young age is one of the factors. Each of them comes alive when they tell the story of how they were discovered at their trial.

“My dad said I had to stay home unless I got my grades up,” says Prince. “I think my coach thought I was a little special so he drove to my house and explained that this was a big opportunity and he thought I would do well. I promised him I would do everything in school, so he drove me to the pitch. About 1,000 boys were getting ready. It was crazy but everyone knows it is the best academy in Ghana now.

“I played well and Jeremy (Seethal) phoned after to say he wanted to take me to the academy — so we drove with him to my house. My dad thought I had got into trouble again!”

Often the first representative of Right to Dream that these young footballers and their families meet, Seethal’s role can be vital.

“He explained he wanted me to join,” says Prince. “My dad was asking about school and a whole lot of questions, but he understood.

“I packed my case and my boots and left. I woke up and thought, ‘Where am I?’. I saw this facility with eight pitches and thought, ‘This must be paradise’.”

Prince says he could not stop crying when he first moved to the residential academy in Accra. His father came to stay for a month, which eased the transition.

“You’ve got to have a ‘Why?’ — why am I doing this? What has kept me going so far is that I want to see myself at the highest stage. If I win, I’m not the only one winning — a thousand people in my community are too. I would just love to hear someone say, ‘I want to be like Prince’. That only would be worth it for me… oh, and to play for Chelsea too!”

Growing up in a village to the north of Ghanaian city Tamale, Seidu’s dream move is to Liverpool. Thousands of other young footballers would say the same, but his ‘Why?’ is profound.

He says: “I started playing at six locally but it was not a good place to stay or play football. I had four brothers and sisters, so my mother moved me to my grandmother’s. She was alone with the children and took care of me, but I started gambling, until my coach found out.

“It all toughened me. I haven’t seen my mother and father since I joined, as where they stay is dangerous. They don’t want me to come there. My grandmother died when I was 17, which was very sad for me.

“Growing up in Right to Dream has been like a family. They have made me happy.”

---

Building a style of play to fit three continents

Referring to it as a bible is too religious for Pedersen, but that’s what most FCN staff call his all-encompassing vision.

“I prefer ‘playbook’,” he laughs.

It includes eight phases of play — four attacking and four defensive — with 22 build-up patterns to potentially use depending on how the opposing team are defending. All coaches are taught to coach in these terms so players understand what is required.

“Creativity comes from structure,” Pedersen says. “We have done the problem-solving for the players by analysing what opponents do and the patterns and situations which occur. We have clear descriptions and animations of these.

“When players are playing, they must not think too much, as then you do problem-solving, which is slow. Decision-making has to be automatic. You need to put them in the same position, again and again, to know where you receive the ball and which options you will have.

“It is then about the individual action and that is more about skill acquisition. That is why we need to get them at (ages) 10 and 11 to make them good enough.

“The players are so different, but when you see them play with the same principles and still express themselves, it is fantastic. This is our competitive edge.”

Having moved back into an overarching role last year after four years as first-team coach at FCN, Pedersen interviews all potential employees himself. Garner, who had experience as a head coach at four clubs in the English Football League (the three divisions below the Premier League), was put through a five-stage interview process: background and beliefs; values; culture and environment; technical and tactical; and a visit to FCN to take a session and watch the men’s and women’s team.

“Flemming is fantastic. I wish I had met him 15 years ago,” says Garner. “If I question something, there is a rationale behind the decision. In England if you ask someone, ‘Why are you doing this?’, there often isn’t really a rationale, but Flemming has studied the game in great depth and looked at the data behind each thought.”

Garner is learning to communicate using specific language from the playbook. The focus is on producing tactically smart players who understand the game themselves, so the analysis session working on defensive set pieces The Athletic sits in on sees the floor opened to the squad for discussion.

Then Pedersen interjects: “What is the maximum distance a marker can travel between the time the corner is taken and the ball arriving at the back post?”

After a lingering silence, he reveals the answer is up to 15 metres (just under 50 feet). He has decided to experiment on this in the first team. It is built into his problem-solving playbook.

Right to Dream is now in a different position to day one. In 2021, Man Capital, took majority control of Right to Dream as part of a nine-figure investment. It launched a Right to Dream academy in Cairo last year, and will open its next hub in the U.S. in January as part of the £500million purchase of the new San Diego MLS franchise.

Both the Egypt and US academies will be run identically to those in Ghana and Denmark. San Diego FC will remove the financial barrier that prevents communities from accessing elite sport and education in the U.S., while their proximity to the Mexican border enables them to search for talent in nearby Tijuana.

𝘽𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙩 𝙙𝙞𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙩.

Future home of our Performance Center & @Right2Dream Academy. pic.twitter.com/E3KuMZUFhX

— San Diego FC (@sandiegofc) July 23, 2024

Multi-club networks have become common in football but Right to Dream is now a four-pronged multi-academy network. It has access to talent in West Africa, North Africa, Scandinavia, the United States and Mexico. FCN players Marcus Ingvartsen and Jeppe Tverskov will join San Diego in January.

“It is so exciting I can’t describe it,” says Pedersen. “When in your life do you ever get a chance of having a blank piece of paper?

“We need to consider the league and the three time zones (in the States) but we have seen this way of playing and training work in West Africa and Scandinavia. Now we are seeing it work in Egypt, too. Why should it not work in America?”.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)