Ever since the Premier League’s £564 million broadcast deal with PPTV in China was terminated suddenly last year, English top-flight clubs, as well as many others from Europe, have been left wondering how it’s possible to make a profit from China.

Lucrative broadcast rights were seen as key to monetising the market, with sponsorship deals and merchandise sales so far, on the whole, not delivering enough to compensate for investments made in a market where some clubs have been active for at least five-to-ten years.

The Premier League swiftly agreed a one-year deal with Tencent reported to be worth £17 million up front – less than 10 per cent of the value per season of the contract with PPTV. The deal was seen as a correction of the value of the league’s media rights in the country.

But what if ‘how can we make money out of China now?’ is still the wrong question to ask, even if some clubs feel they have made significant commitments in the country?

Much is made of the long-term vision required for Western sports properties to be successful in China, but perhaps now clubs from England and elsewhere are starting to find out just how patient their approach needs to be.

Rowan Simons, who has been working in the media and sports industries in China for more than 30 years and wrote the book Bamboo Goalposts about the country’s football tribulations, believes that clubs need to assist China’s efforts to develop its own football infrastructure as their top priority.

Massive problem

Simons is the founder of China ClubFootball, the largest independent grassroots football network in Beijing. It became the Chinese capital’s first foreign-invested football enterprise when it was established in 2001, and has since built up a network of coaching programmes run by UEFA B and English FA level 2 coaches who are paired with local assistant coaches.

In 2019, prior to the pandemic, 4,200 boys and girls, aged from 3 to 18, took part. This included 26 junior teams, each with its own local identity, that play in an 80-strong league managed by ClubFootball, with the balance of teams drawn from other grassroots clubs. The network pyramid rises through to an U18s team that can compete with pro academies, but with players who remain in full-time education.

Simons tells offthepitch.com that it plans to expand to other parts of the country, and aims to help build up a grassroots football culture in China – something which he argues European football clubs have so far failed to do.

“I think there's a massive problem with the way that the major clubs from Europe have approached China,” he says. “They've all tried to put their brand in front of the game when the game here hasn't even really started as a participation sport.

“We've yet to see many clubs from Europe really address the main issue in China, which is the lack of participation, lack of ownership, and lack of community. This is what we're trying to do with ClubFootball, to really start very organically and build teams in local areas that have their own identities, that develop a sense of local pride.

“None of the major European clubs have done that. They're more about ‘how can we make money out of China now?’ I think that's a massive disservice to the long-term future of Chinese football, and part of the reason why we still don't have any elite players coming out of China, because underneath all of this gloss, the grassroots still doesn't really exist, isn't well organised, isn't part of society, part of culture.”

Long-term targets

In April 2016 the Chinese Football Association published a strategy designed to ensure the country becomes a “first-class football superpower” by 2050.

Long-term targets included having 50 million children and adults playing the game by 2020, and at least 20,000 football training centres and 70,000 pitches in place by the same year, with one football pitch for every 10,000 people by 2030.

Simons notes that “the hardware deficit has been addressed to some extent, but that is the easy part. It is much easier to build pitches than create a network of clubs to play on them.”

Football has already become a compulsory part of the national curriculum, but Simons suggests that this raises its own issues. “The campus football programme is great in as much as it exposes many more kids to the game, but it is another example of government taking control. Rather than encourage the volunteerism essential to operating and growing grassroots clubs, the civic responsibility element has been taken away.”

Time to give something back

Since the reform plan was announced the extent of the challenges faced by China in developing its footballing infrastructure have become clear, with concerns about the quality of coaching, for instance, and China still a long way from success at national level. The men’s team is currently ranked 75th by FIFA and has still only qualified for one World Cup, in 2002. Chinese players good enough to play at the top level in Europe remain scarce, with Wu Lei at Espanyol a notable exception.

Restrictions, including on how much Chinese Super League clubs can pay overseas players, have been designed to help switch the focus towards developing local talent. There now also appears to be an increased importance attached to the role that European clubs can play in developing the domestic game.

This would never ever happen in 100 years in Europe. So in a lot of ways the clubs have abandoned all the principles that helped build a football pyramid in their own countries, in order to try and make revenue out of China.

In its 2020 Red Card report, which assesses the activities of European football leagues, teams and players in China, the global sports digital marketing agency Mailman warned that “it’s finally time for football and sports organisations to give something back. Too many have come to China looking for revenue and sponsors instead of focusing first on what they can contribute. Those that don’t pivot priorities will be found out in an ultra-sensitive audience.”

Simons observes that “the government’s change in priorities will drive this re-evaluation, but foreign clubs should also know that, due to the lack of deep roots in society, respect in China is directly related to short-term performance, which fluctuates. Last year, Liverpool was the name on everybody’s lips, this year not so much, unless they win the Champions League again!”

Abandoning all the principles

Over recent years a number of European leagues and clubs have opened academies and set up coaching programmes in China, with thousands of children taking part.

However, with most clubs charging licence fees for the use of their brand, Simons notes that this is “building a situation in China where we have local teams which are foreign branded. So even at the junior level you might have Arsenal versus Real Madrid, or Barcelona versus Manchester City, or Bayern Munich.

“This would never ever happen in 100 years in Europe. So in a lot of ways the clubs have abandoned all the principles that helped build a football pyramid in their own countries, in order to try and make revenue out of China.

“There’s lots and lots of short-term activity, almost PR activity where, say, coaches will come over for a short period, and do some coaching, and then they disappear again.”

The result, he argues, is that “China's not building its own football pyramid. People have their Premier League, LaLiga and Bundesliga team, and they have their Chinese Super League team, but they don't have their own local grassroots team. So that for me is a major issue where the clubs have not thought long-term; they are helping to strengthen an already inverted pyramid.”

He adds: “I think there is a tendency for European clubs to take the grassroots for granted. It has always been there [in their own countries]. Indeed, the top clubs were, almost without exception, originally amateur clubs themselves. It is hard for them to grasp the concept of a football-loving country that does not have this base.”

Silver bullet

A game changer for European clubs would of course be signing a Chinese player. Espanyol jumped 27 places to 14th in Mailman’s ranking of the most popular European clubs online published in the 2020 Red Card report, following the Spanish club’s signing of Wu Lei – “the first major change in the usually consistent top 15,” Mailman noted.

But Simons suggests that the prospect of many more Chinese players of a similar calibre emerging any time soon remains slim. “For sure, the silver bullet is to find a Chinese player who can play at the top level. That's the one way where in a short period of time you could massively increase your following in China. But I don't think it looks like happening. It is also not sustainable. When the player leaves, so will the fans.”

Several European leagues and clubs are expanding their development programmes in the country. But Simons suggests that a radically different approach is still required.

He notes that most European clubs “sign up with a local partner, take a very big licence fee and then let that partner run at it.”

And he explains that those local partners “in the vast majority of cases are working to a Chinese model. So they're thinking about elite players, winning elite competitions, getting brownie points from the government, which is completely the opposite of the model in the UK, for instance, where top clubs do so much in the community. Those clubs’ local partners in China don't see that as what they should be doing, and are therefore actually taking the market away from the grassroots clubs and poaching players at very young ages.”

Filling the gap

So, what can European clubs do differently on a practical level that can help develop China’s domestic game?

“The work I am suggesting should be done first by Chinese pro clubs, but they are also taking a short-term, elitist view. Thus, there is a big gap that smart foreign clubs could fill by becoming true partners to the grassroots in a targeted location. Foreign clubs, quite naturally, don’t see this as their responsibility, but unless someone takes the initiative there will never be a healthy football pyramid.”

Simons urges top clubs to provide whatever help they can to even the smallest of Chinese grassroots clubs – with the potential long-term reward being that further down the line they can provide a higher level of young talent to their own academies in China.

Should support - not replace

“It could be equipment. It could be finance. It could be player visits. How about some moral support? For example, ClubFootball has a charitable initiative called Football for Life which takes the joys of football into disadvantaged communities. It could be all the things that the clubs do so well in their home markets, in order to support the local infrastructure, not replace it.

“So the trick would be to get behind football rather than in front of it, by building relationships with home-grown clubs and supporting them and the communities to help that work at the grassroots level, and then benefiting when young players come through that system.”

He adds: “Personally, I think if a really big club took that long-term approach, it would be a radical departure from how the Chinese government and society perceive the foreign powerhouses, and would have a massive impact here, building loyalty on a level that we've never seen before.”

European football clubs are continually looking for new areas to develop their business interests, expand their global campaigns and extend the international reach of their brand management.

Efforts to increase their global reach are often focused on the US and Asia, especially among the top clubs in Europe. But not Olympique Marseille. 

The 1993 Champions League winners are taking a different path as they have made Africa their number one priority in terms of boosting their international business interests and growing their global fan base. 

Thanks to its geographical proximity to North Africa and French colonial history, between 120,000 and 150,000 people with origins in French-speaking African countries Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria live in Marseille. 

Olympique Marseille have also had a long tradition of signing African players - Didier Drogba, Abedi Pelé, Basile Boli and Mamadou Niang - who have generally found it easy to settle in the Mediterranean city thanks to its lingual, cultural and gastronomical similarities to Africa. 

“You cannot plant a tree in stone”

But despite the strong emotional ties to Africa, “OM” (as they are referred to in France) didn’t really exploit their obvious connection to the continent business-wise until the former chief marketing and commercial officer at FC Barcelona and AS Roma, Laurent Colette, joined the club in May 2018 as general director. 

Colette reveals that one of his first objectives was to identify a focus for Olympique Marseille's international business ambitions. 

"When I arrived in Barcelona ten years ago, they wanted to market themselves everywhere in the world, but I told them that is impossible because there are too many countries. So we agreed to focus on two areas, China and the US," Colette tells offthepitch.com. 

In Marseille he did the same exercise:

“We also needed a focus, but it wouldn’t make sense to market OM in Asia because not enough people know us there. It’s like when you want to plant a tree. You can plant a tree in fertile soil, or you can try to plant it in stone. And going into markets where we were almost unknown would be like planting a tree in stone. 

"So, we said, let’s focus on the area which will be most rewarding for us emotionally, business-wise, socially and sports performance-wise, and it became clear that Africa was going to be our priority for the international promotion of our brand.”

Strategic partnerships

Olympique Marseille have since launched a number of brands and merchandise which is focused on - and inspired by - fan-based and knowledge-sharing initiatives on the African continent. 

The club have initiated a vast programme to bring together and unite their supporters on the African continent under the “OM Africa” flag in a project which includes exclusive events, original products, official fan clubs and much more.

"Of course, there are challenges in Africa and compared to the US and Asia, you have to be more patient. But it pays off. Financially what we want to deliver is a bit of an ecosystem mixing business with brand development, sports – and performance-related issues and social aspects," says Colette.

In Africa, he says, the club are in touch with how they should develop their brand, adding that the conditions are very favourable for developing a business. 

Colette also emphasises that their efforts in Africa are based very much on respect. 

"We want to give back what they have given to us. We haven’t done enough in the past to show our appreciation for African fans. Time is certainly ripe to build emotional ties with the Africans and then business will follow naturally," says Colette. 

They can sense that we have made a long-term commitment to Africa. But we are just giving back to them what they have given us for a long time

Colette says Olympique Marseille are already harvesting the fruits of their efforts in Africa, but that it is only the beginning of the campaign to establish l´OM effectively on the African continent. 

"We have doubled the sale of official Olympic Marseille PUMA gear in Africa and extended our fan-base considerably," he says.

The general director also reveals that in Algeria Olympic Marseille have doubled the number of fans from 800,000 to 1.6 million in just two years. Equally, in Senegal there is a 60 per cent spontaneous awareness of Olympique Marseille - which is extremely high for a foreign country. 

"We don’t feel a lot of competition from other European clubs to develop our interests in Marseille. At the same time, we get a lot of love and respect from the Africans. 

"They can sense that we have made a long-term commitment to Africa. But we are just giving back to them what they have given us for a long time," Colette says.

Academies in Africa

Olympique Marseille also inaugurated two academies in Algeria and Tunisia to foster talent with more than 500 registered players. 

In November 2019, Olympique Marseille joined forces with the Mercure International Group and Basile Boli (who scored the winning goal for Marseille in the 1993 Champions League final) to open the first PUMA megastore in Casablanca with Olympique Marseille gear. 

Marseille have also announced a three-year strategic partnership with prestigious Senegalese footballing academy Diambars. 

Aside from a youth coach exchange programme and knowledge transfer between the Ligue 1 club and the Senegalese academy, the contract gives Marseille a first refusal option on two Diambars players per season. 

The academy was formed in 2003 and welcomes 120 youngsters a year between the ages of 12 and 19. Marseille also have plans to open a network of soccer schools for young Nigerians at the Sports Institute of the University of Port Harcourt. 

Currently, the school has 200 students who will be able to benefit from Olympique de Marseille training methodology from the end of January this year.
In addition to the sports aspect, the club would like to set up multiple operations such as the creation of social projects carried by the club’s foundation, OMFondation, the organisation of a local competition or the foundation of a fan club in Port Harcourt. 

He didn’t really know what to expect. He was just happy to see that the book “How Hard Can It Be?” was finally out there – and enthusiastic about the first sales numbers from the publisher.

But what got Mads Davidsen, sporting director at Al Jazira Club excited was an analysis he found on a fan site of Danish Superliga-side OB (Odense Boldklub), one of the bigger clubs in Denmark, who famously knocked out Real Madrid in the UEFA Cup back in 1994 after a 2-0 win at Bearnabeu.

“I thought it was brilliant. My co-author Dan Hammer did participate in a podcast with them and introduced them to the book and our philosophies. And then on the back of that, one of the members of this fan forum decided to take our model and analyse how OB performed in the light of our recommendations. And it made me really. Happy to see how fans, who often are described as fanatic, emotional and out of reach, could use our model to have a serious discussion about the work of their chief executive, the owner and their sporting director.”

Since last summer, he has been working for one of the leading clubs in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, who are playing in the UAE Arabian Gulf League. Previously, Davidsen worked as a strategy consultant to clubs and ownership groups from his own company, Optima Football, but where he really made a name for himself was when he worked alongside Sven-Göran Eriksson in Chinese football. In 2013/14, Davidsen played a central role in the historical Guangzhou R&F season - when the Chinese club qualified for the AFC Champions League for the first time.

One of  the most valuable listed clubs

From 2016 to 2019, the Dane acted as technical director at Shanghai SIPG FC in China, and during that spell the club won their first championship ever.

“What I liked so much about the analysis from the OB fan was the way he used our methodology in such a concrete manner. It was not just a consultant speaking from the helicopter, but he was going through some of the very specific decisions that the club’s management team had been through. And that is very much why we decided to write this book. We wanted to give owners and executives in clubs a very concrete strategy and management tool to use if they decided to give their own strategy a review,” Davidsen explains.

His co-author is Dan Hammer, who used to serve as a CEO in FC Copenhagen when the club were commercially at their best approximately ten years ago. At that stage, FC Copenhagen had a diversified strategy that was very different to most other European clubs. To describe it briefly, they built a number of businesses around the football club, all of them somehow related to the football and entertainment industry, and this portfolio of businesses was part of the listed company.

When the stock price of FC Copenhagen was at its highest it was one of the most valuable clubs in Europe. Today, Hammer is the CEO of the biggest concert venue in Copenhagen. But he is still a passionate football fan and a member of a weekly podcast about football business in Denmark.

Number of strategies to choose from

“How Hard Can It Be?” is a book on strategies in football and how to develop a sustainable club in 2020 both on and off the pitch. About – as Davidsen puts it - a biased and undeveloped world of football and how emotions often precede analytical preparations. He believes the book offers some insights into a theme previously not covered in depth in any book.

“We have tried our best to make sure that all the theory is in place, and that everything we write is based upon solid research. But obviously when creating a model – and when trying to evaluate how other owners or executives do their job – we’re also doing this on the basis of how we think it should be done. So yes – we do have opinions about how football clubs should be built and developed. But – and this is really important – you could choose a number of strategic ways.

"We don’t advocate one specific strategy, because there is no one strategy that suits two different clubs. But what we are confident and very clear about is the fact that every club needs a strategy. And even though most owners and executives would argue that they do have one, I would challenge them and argue that most clubs don’t stick to their strategy. and also claim that the strategies are not of the quality that they should be.”

Chairman will interfere

Davidsen is fully aware that he and Hammer are taking a difficult position when they argue that most clubs need to work harder on their strategies – and not least on the execution part of the strategy.

“It’s always very hard to destroy things that you built yourself. So obviously, we would meet resistance from executives at clubs who feel they're doing a great job and that they’re trying as much as they can to make long-term decisions working in this industry. And we have lots of respect for many leaders and the work they do, so our message is not that they should all do things completely differently.

“Having said that, I would argue that all clubs should look at the governance structure of the club. The strategy that clubs have developed and which they work hard to execute is one thing. But my clear experience is that most clubs don’t stick to their strategy - especially when it comes to the ‘power game’. Who is in charge of what? And I have seen in so many clubs that slowly but surely the chairman will start to interfere in sporting decisions, even though it was agreed that he or she should not do so. But if you start accepting small deviations when the pressure is on, then along the way you will start making poor decisions, because you didn’t have the right governance in place – and the stamina to stick to it.”

More open to new ideas

Davidsen explains that the book is definitely not trying to tell people what to do – but rather an encouragement to make people reflect on how they do things. And why they do things the way they do.

“When you're busy as a sporting director or as a chief executive, you probably run very fast every day and maybe you simply don’t have the time to reflect deeply on your leadership and on your strategic direction. Hopefully this book will make executives reflect and challenge their own decisions,” says Davidsen.

He relates a story about an American investor he worked for, and how they tried to lay the foundations for a club to be managed in the best possible way on all fronts. They put a lot of work into this, and were open to buying a club in Switzerland because an analysis showed that the chance of being relegated from that league was very small, so they would be able to play many youngsters – and foreigners – in the club which could lead to some profitable sales.

“My point is that as an outsider to this industry, obviously you tend to be more open to new ideas. To doing things differently. And I guess that is simply human logic. And as I said before, it can be very hard to realise that you may have done something wrong in your professional life. Still, we hope that executives and owners will read the book and challenge their mindset.”

Tactical understanding of the game

Davidsen is convinced that football executives all over the world will be forced to take a hard look at their strategies in the near future because of the financial difficulties many clubs are facing as a result of the coronavirus.

”The rapid financial growth in football did shield incomprehensible decisions made by owners and executives. Such poor decision-making need to stop. And I reckon it will be stopped in the near future because the growth in broadcasting has stopped and the decline in revenues during the lockdown has forced clubs to go through not only their cost base but also their strategies,” says Davidsen.

Readers of the book “How Hard Can It Be?” will realise that there are many details about how to develop a playing strategy – which is basically the backbone of the work, because without a playing philosophy you can’t make long-term decisions. This publication is not about on-the-pitch topics – but Davidsen has a point when it comes to the tactical understanding of the game.

“Executives and owners need to realise that they don’t have the knowledge needed to make football decisions. That is the short version. But to develop a playing style in a club takes a lot of knowledge – and not least – time. My point is that if executives and owners don’t accept that they should leave these decisions to people with a deep knowledge about the game, then problems will occur.

"Top management obviously should have a say in the decision about what sort of style would suit the club, the history of the club and the strategy – of course they should be involved in this. But they should leave it to the sporting director and technical director to evaluate whether the team is actually playing the way they should – and to decide if the progress is acceptable or not,” he says.

Leave it to those who understand the big picture

Football tends to be simplified and often misunderstood, Davidsen claims, saying football is the most complex and systematic game of all sports, but poorly understood.

For example, he says there could be a match where the right wing or perhaps the right back is delivers one cross after another to the back post but never finds a team mate, and the defence is able to clear over and over again. Often people would say the quality of the cross is poor because no one met the ball in the box.

“But maybe they've worked all week to make crosses to the back post where the left wing or a number eight or the striker should come in and try to score. So you shouldn’t be critical about the player who did the crossing but to all the other players who failed to do what was agreed. This example is just to say that sometimes things in a match seem so obviously simple. But they're not. So leave it to those with all the knowledge and who understand the big picture.”

Finally, Davidsen says that while executives in the industry may rightly feel that times are tough at the moment – they should also acknowledge that they have a group of customers loyal enough to make all other industry leaders jealous.

Football is blessed

“Imagine being in an industry where your customers continue to support you, buy your products, no matter how hard you let them down. You can do it for centuries and still they love you. Some may say that it can be a dramatic decision for a consumer to turn their back on Coca Cola if they’ve enjoyed that beverage for their whole life – and then start drinking Pepsi. But in football that would never happen. Imagine a Tottenham-fan turning around and starting to support Arsenal – or the other way around – that never happened. And will never happen. Because football is blessed with the most loyal customers you can find.”

“How Hard Can It Be?” (In Danish “Hvor svært kan det være?”) has so far only been published in Danish – but it might be translated into English.

Unlocking insights from data and growing their brand internationally are key to a global strategy to turn Sevilla FC into one of the world's best teams.

The Andalusian club's ambitious plan aims to substantially grow revenues off the pitch and ensure Sevilla compete with the world's best clubs on it.

Harnessing technology to drive growth is an important part of the strategy, which will go before the club's board for approval in the first quarter of next year. An enhanced data department is planned with a view to using artificial intelligence and other technologies.

"We are not experts. But we have decided that we want to have a role to play with this. We are starting and we believe that in some years we will be able to be a top club at doing these kinds of things," José María Cruz, CEO of Sevilla FC, tells offthepitch.com.

"And we also want to not only use this technology for ourselves, but to create a business unit in order to sell some of this technology to other football clubs."

Entrepreneurs in India

Sevilla already have experience of sharing knowledge. Working with LaLiga, they signed a strategic consultancy agreement earlier this year with Young Africans S.C., Tanzania's most successful team.   

"In principle, we provide sporting knowledge mainly in the scouting and sporting management area. But we also want to bring our expertise in some other areas – marketing, ticketing, hospitality, merchandising, etc," Cruz says.

There are further plans to work with clubs in developing countries and nations where football is not the number one sport. Cruz says Sevilla have been looking for a "long-term partnership" and believes they have found one in India.

They have signed a memorandum of understanding with a group of entrepreneurs in India that owns a yet-to-be-revealed football club in the Indian second division. Sevilla will provide sporting consulting services and identify Indian startups to work with on specialised technology that can be applied to the football industry.

"That is part of our strategy because it combines technology and the internationalisation of our brand," Cruz says.

It might be too expensive in the US

"More and more, football is a worldwide industry. And I believe that we need to have a close relationship with clubs from other countries in order to create a base to grow together with them."

Sevilla are also exploring opportunities in other markets and, for the next few years, will focus on India, the US, Mexico and "one or two countries in Africa".

They are not the first LaLiga team to take an interest in North America. In January, Atlético Ottawa, owned by Atlético Madrid, entered the Canadian Premier League.

"We are analysing the possibility in the future to be investors in a US soccer franchise," Cruz says. 

"I don't know if we will be able to have enough money to do this. But I believe that we must try to be present in US soccer."

Sevilla's international outlook comes as the club seeks to build its brand globally.

Will find proper markets

After consulting LaLiga and branding experts, Sevilla created a new visual identity and narrative that reflected its history as LaLiga's oldest club, recent success and future ambition. Last season's Europa League triumph was Sevilla's sixth, more than any other club.

"First of all, we need to analyse who we are and how people in Seville and outside Seville see us. Because sometimes you believe that you are X and people believe that you are Y," Cruz says.

"We believe that we have an interesting story. And if we are able to accompany the telling of the story with a rebrand and we are able to find the proper markets, we will find that more people than we thought are interested in Sevilla FC."

In the next four years, assuming a full recovery from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cruz wants the club's revenues to increase from €206 million (2018/19 season) to €300 million. He says it will take longer to see serious returns from investments being made now in internationalisation, data and digital operations.

"It will be in the following three years (after the next four years) when we expect to retain some revenues from this," he says.

"When I speak of increasing our revenues from €200 million to €300 million in the next four years, I am thinking mainly in obtaining more money for our talent – our players."

Signed 14 players

Under the guidance of sporting director Monchi, Sevilla's track record of buying and developing young players is one of the best in Europe. According to transfer-tracking website Transfermarkt, they have made €366 million from player sales in the past five seasons, with a net spend of €68 million. In that time, they have twice qualified for the Champions League.

Last season was a good example of their impressive ability to renew a squad with little effect on performance. At the start of the season, Sevilla sold 10 players and signed 14. By the end of the season, they had finished fourth to qualify for the Champions League and won the Europa League.

Cruz says the idea of cashing in on their stars for the greater good of the club began with the sale of the late José Antonio Reyes. Aged 20, Reyes was sold to Arsenal in early 2004 for a then club-record fee reportedly worth up to £17.5 million.

"When we have applied this strategy, we have been very successful. When I started with Sevilla FC in 2002, we were very close to bankruptcy. We were a poor squad," Cruz says.

"After receiving the bid for Reyes we had a discussion about how to proceed. We understood that this money would help us to have a better squad. To pay our debts. Two years after, we had the same opportunity (to sell) Sergio Ramos and Julio Baptista.

"We found that by selling some of our stars and reinvesting this money properly in more players we were competitive."

Why don’t they go to matches?

Cruz understands it's an approach that doesn't always sit well with fans.

"The important thing is to understand that when a player has acquired the top of his value, you must sell him because you never know if he will maintain this value in the future," he says.

"It is part of the culture of the club. Of course, the supporters prefer to keep the talent with us, but we explain to them we are not able to grow if we believe that one football player is essential for us. We need not only one talented player, we need a very good squad of 25.

"We have demonstrated that we can be successful in the sporting field even though we sell some players."

While Sevilla's new data department is expected to aid transfer recruitment, the club also want to know more about their fans and their behaviour.

"We have more or less 40,000 season ticket holders. We believe that if we start, say, in July or August 2021, with full capacity of the stadium, we will be able to retain all of them," he says.

"More or less consistently, about 10,000 season ticket holders don't attend … they pay, but they don't attend the match. We want to find out why."

Renew our strategy

Investments in other areas of Sevilla's Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán stadium, including updating corporate hospitality areas, have not gone unnoticed. It will host the 2022 Europa League final, providing an opportunity to showcase the ground and its atmosphere.

Given the choice, though, Cruz would happily swap a place in that match for one in the Champions League final.  Sevilla have qualified for the last 16 of the competition this season, where they will play Borussia Dortmund, and have made about €60 million so far. Winning the Europa League last season brought them €35 million.

For all their success in European football's second-tier competition, the club is aiming higher. Cruz talks about competing with the very best clubs, challenging for the LaLiga title (which Sevilla have won once, in 1946) and winning the Champions League.

"It is a very ambitious plan," he says.

"On one hand, it is paramount for us to have the opportunity to compete consistently in the Champions League, once every two years, with the present format.

"On the other hand, we intend to continue selling players who have been playing with us for some years, in order to obtain more money and have the best squad we are able to have.

"Of course, it is not easy. Most Spanish teams and European teams have the same strategy. But we are happy that we have done some of this in the past.

"Now we need to renew our strategy to find if we can do something better than before and better than other teams in order to grow more quickly than them."

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, last season was a historic year for Benfica. The club's pre-tax profit more than doubled to €46.5 million from a turnover of €140 million, driven by the record-breaking €126 million sale of João Félix to Atletico Madrid.

A testament to the Portuguese club's renowned academy, which has attracted the envy of clubs all over the world. But, as with most others, concerns remain as Covid-19 continues to affect the world of football. For Benfica's chief executive, Domingos Soares de Oliveira, a major question mark remains:

"I fear that if the normal youth competition doesn't restart as soon as possible, a generation of players might be in danger losing their progress," he tells offthepitch.com.

Challenging the Benfica model

While Felix' price made him stand out, the Portuguese is not the only big talent to have come out of Benfica's production line. Other big transfers count Ruben Dias, Ederson and Nelson Semedo to name a few.  

Soares de Oliveira explains the club more than ten years ago decided that in order to compete with the biggest clubs it was necessary to create an additional revenue stream which each year could make up for the comparatively lower broadcasting and commercial revenue a club in the Portuguese league are able to garner.

In fact, according to an offthepitch.com analysis, Benfica's profit on player sales over the past five seasons has, on average (at €86 million per season), exceeded both broadcasting, commercial and matchday income, respectively. 

"As a club outside the big five markets – or even the majority of clubs within the big five marks – you have two possibilities. Either you consider player trading a part of your business in terms of generating additional revenue or you don't and fall behind," he says. 

So, while Benfica's turnover is much lower than the biggest European clubs, the revenue they're able to generate from player trading helps close the gap to clubs whom they would like to be mirrored against.

Just looking at the past decade, Benfica have sold academy developed players for more than €400 million and players in general of around €1 billion, a staggering amount which has proven to be the dependable revenue stream player trading usually isn't considered. 

Working from home is just not the same

Benfica's academy players benefit from the world-renowned standards at the club's facilities, but another important factor in their development is playing competitively. So, when the competitions get suspended – as is the case with many youth leagues – growth is severely halted.

"The young players are suffering from not competing because not competing for them is almost like not having bread on the table," Soares de Oliveira says.

Besides their locally trained players, the club are also dependent on an intricate scouting network across Portugal whose functionality is also under pressure when national movements are restricted.

"They need to restart the competitions because in terms of talent it's there. But if you don't have competitions it becomes difficult to scout," he says, however, underlining Benfica's scouts are still able to perform their duties in some capacity thanks to their extensive database.

Making adjustments

The former chief executive of multinational consultancy Capgemini for Spain and Portugal, Soares de Oliveira compares the situation to when a player is injured.

"If a player is injured and not playing for one year it really affects his ability to progress, especially when he's young," he says.

To make up for the current limitations, the club aim to make sure their academy players feel supported in such a challenging environment.

"We continue taking care of them even if they're not living in the academy," he says, referring to those who are currently unable to attend Benfica's local facilities as they live in the North part of the country or elsewhere such as Algarve. 

"Our coaches and physical department staff are always with them, they're never on their own, and we try to follow their physical plans and training sessions at home. But it's nothing compared with living in the academy and actually playing with a ball." 

"We don’t say it’s a business plan, it’s a football programme,” Ajax CEO Edwin van der Sar told The Guardian in September, speaking about the club’s phenomenally successful academy. “We want our success with the players we educate. And if in two, three years we win trophies with them and they get a higher level, the interest of other clubs should be there. And those clubs should be bigger. After two to three years, it’s time to move on.”

In the past six seasons, almost no club has done this better than Ajax. They’ve generated €342 million in reported transfer income from the sale of players who passed through their academy; nearly 50 per cent more than the next-best club, and only €50 million shy of the top-ranked club Benfica (who can thank João Félix for a third of their income). The club has been able to increase its overall revenue by 42 per cent just through the sale of academy products.

It may not be called a business plan, but it’s a plan most businesses would be more than happy to replicate.

Clubs revisiting their spendings

Ajax are rightly heralded as world-leaders in talent development. No one inside the club would doubt the value that their academy delivers; an ECA report from 2012 revealed that the club spent €6 million per year on their youth setup, meaning that even accounting for a potential rise in costs since then, the club has developed a hugely profitable operation.

Most football clubs, however, cannot tell the same story as Ajax. Club CEOs often grapple with quantifying the return on investment in their academy. This is especially true in England, where clubs graded Category One in the Elite Player Performance Plan can expect to spend around £3 million per year on their academy, with some of the biggest clubs often spending several times more.

With the coronavirus pandemic putting a squeeze on top-line revenue, it is understandable that clubs are considering revisiting their spending in areas where the benefit can be hard to see. Just this week, Birmingham City announced that they “will be looking at remodelling the Academy system and exploring a “B and C Team” model” despite having recently sold Jude Bellingham for a significant fee to Borussia Dortmund.

Debuts do not mean much in of themselves

Then take the Blues’ rivals Aston Villa, who since 2015 have recorded €14 million in sales of its academy products, or a little over €2 million a year. That places them 25th in English during this period, below clubs like Huddersfield Town, Fulham, and Swansea City. A superficial view of return on investment would suggest that Villa’s academy simply isn’t productive.

In the absence of meaningful transfer income to assess academy ‘productivity’, the go-to statistics for academy managers are first team debuts and minutes. But this is not a conversation that can be easily grounded in objectivity; debuts do not mean much in of themselves, and playing time needs to be understood through the prism of performance and contribution to the team.

This is of course particularly relevant for Aston Villa, with Jack Grealish being a product of the Bodymoor Heath academy. Grealish was pivotal in the club’s Premier League survival last season, and his continued form this season has even invited comparisons with Paul Gascoigne. Aston Villa may not have sold Jack Grealish - despite numerous suitors - but that doesn’t mean that their academy hasn’t delivered a return on investment.

A healthy financial return

Analytical models can begin to quantify this ‘unrealised’ value in a player. Specifically, we can ask: how much would it cost Aston Villa to acquire a player that delivers the same level of performance as Grealish, and how much more (or less) than this hypothetical player does Grealish cost?

Our player model - which evaluates the performance and value of over 100,000 players globally - suggests that a like-for-like replacement for Grealish today would likely cost Villa in the region of a £40 million transfer fee, and a further £4.5 million per year in wages. After amortising the fee over four years (a typical contract length), we’d expect Grealish’s replacement to cost £14.5 million a year, substantially more than Grealish’s reported £7 million salary.

Though Aston Villa have not sold Grealish, it is likely that they’re getting a healthy financial return on their academy in the 2020/21 season, after accounting for the ongoing operating costs of the academy this year.

We’ve performed this analysis for all Premier League clubs in the 2019/20 season, and combined it with transfer fees received to get a holistic view on academy return on investment. Unsurprisingly, it is the biggest clubs in the country that record the biggest estimated ‘savings’ from their academy; it costs a club like Manchester United a significant amount of money to acquire a first team player, so a starter who comes from the academy with typically much lower wages and without a transfer fee is going to represent a significant cost saving.

We estimate that Manchester United’s player costs last season would have been nearly £60 million higher were it not for their academy, such were the performance levels and costs of Marcus Rashford, Scott McTominay, and Mason Greenwood in particular.

Leicester and Tottenham are different examples

Adjusting for overall cost bases, both Tottenham Hotspur and Leicester City rank well too, though in different ways. Harry Kane accounts for roughly 75 per cent of Spurs’ £44 million in savings last season; we estimate that a player of his level would cost the club over £100 million in transfer fees and £14 million a year in wages. One year of Harry Kane performance pays for the academy several years over.

Leicester City meanwhile spread their £20 million in academy savings across four players: Ben Chillwell, Harvey Barnes, Hamza Choudhury, and Luke Thomas. In 2020/21 their savings will fall with Chillwell’s sale, though clearly this is more than compensated for with the reported £45 million transfer fee - combining these figures allows a club to get a holistic view on their total academy ROI for the year.

Razor-focused on understanding return on investment

Southampton, meanwhile, continued their balance of having academy players contributing significantly in their first team - most notably James Ward-Prowse - while also generating revenue from player sales. The club will always attract headlines for the fees it has and will receive for its homegrown talent, but it would be remiss to overlook the huge value those players have added to the club on the field over the years.

For the next few years at least, clubs will be razor-focused on understanding return on investment, and even before Covid no area of a club caused more debate about ROI than its academy. Our collective obsession with transfer fees means we will always tend to be drawn into narratives about academy productivity from a pure, tangible monetary perspective.

But as we know, players aren’t simply assets to be traded, and some of the most important academy players may never sell for a fee. The smartest clubs are therefore finding ways to quantify this, and as a result will be able to realise even greater benefits from their youth setup.

It’s not exactly shattering news that what separates the great footballers, the professionals, from the Sunday League-players is mental strength.

In football, and in basically all sport, it is common knowledge that on various Sunday League-teams around the world you can find players with technique and physical abilities of a very high level, but the mental aspect of their game is not ready for a professional career.

Dr. Morgan David is well aware of this but still believes he has something to offer to the world of football.

According to him, clubs tend to forget – or ignore – this knowledge when they select players for their academies. Or at least they don’t do things as thoroughly as they should be done, according to the former academic from Exeter and Antwerp University.

This knowledge could be used in clubs

“I believe that clubs are fully aware that their players need the right mentality to make it through the system and to play and succeed at the very top. But when recruiting players, it could be when they are 14 years old, they would gain so much if they actually took a closer look at the players’ psychological abilities. Because those results are much more reliable for their future careers than their abilities to run, dribble, shoot and sprint,” he says.

Four years ago, David, a behavioural science expert, founded his own company, where he took all his academic knowledge about behavioural science and developed some tools for businesses to use to learn more about consumer psychology.

But one day he was contacted by Delphine Herblin, a clinical psychologist working with professional players from various French clubs. She was very interested in the findings from the academic world because she believed that this knowledge could be used in clubs.

And together, the French woman and the UK-based French scientist, working with his own private business, developed a tool they thought could revolutionise the way clubs identified talents for their academies.

Almost frightening reading in clubs

“To me this knowledge, though very recent, was not new. But sometimes people in the academic world know about studies and the impact they could have, many years before it is known to the public. I had used this knowledge in my own company but found out that these studies could be useful for clubs, because they spend so much money on their academies,” he says.

Right now, Predicta Football has only just started, and David runs his original business in parallel, but he is convinced that it has something important to offer clubs.

"Actually the studies are very clear in this area and it could be almost frightening reading for the clubs, because often those players who mature early physically don’t score particularly well in the psychological tests, nor do they show higher-than-average physical skills as adults.

"But they tend to be offered contracts and they are being well taken care of because their technique and physical abilities are superior to other players of the same age. The interesting thing is that players maturing at a young age actually show worse physical or psychological skills at adulthood."

David wouldn’t go as far as to say that clubs tend to pick the wrong players when they select them for their academies, but he believes they could do a better job.

"Our tool cannot stand alone. It was developed in order to support the other methods and criteria that clubs are already using. But clubs need to be aware that we can measure the psychological abilities at a very young age.

"The picture is very clear; those who score high on this when they are 12 years old tend to be successful when they are grown-ups and professional players. And this is research from the world of sports. So you can actually predict who has the mental ability to succeed in the long run," he says.

Hopefully do it before others

But it is well-known that the brain of a teenager is by no means fully-developed, so how can you make such predictions at this early stage in their career?

“You are absolutely right. The brain and their mental ability will develop a lot in their late teens. But still the picture is very clear. Those who score low when they are 14 years old would also score low, compared to others, when they are in their early twenties.”

What we look at is how they react when they lose. They shouldn’t do too well. So we try to see how affected they are when losing

The scientific foundation behind the tool is many years of research in applied behavioural science. And based on these scientific results, David has built a science-based identification tool for predictive recruitment in football.

What Predicta Football does is make assessments of players’ cognitive and psychological resources.

“Because our tool is based on so much research we know that clubs can reduce uncertainty in their recruitment decisions and identify tomorrow’s talents with scientific accuracy. And hopefully do it before others.”

Predicta Football uses questionnaires and cognitive games which are put to the players in groups of up to 30. These tests can be done in less than an hour.

“We are not saying that our tool can replace everything clubs are doing today. Not at all. This tool cannot stand alone. But we utterly believe that clubs need to dig much deeper into this area and understand that the mental performance of players can be improved vastly. And that the psychological profile shown in tests when players are young tends to tell a future story about these talents.”

How affected are they when losing

Predicta Football tests players in several dimensions. One of them is the so-called PFC-dimension, which will tell a story about the person’s ability when it comes to planning, flexibility and creativity.

“This is important because it would tell the coaches and the other staff at the academies whether the player is creative on the pitch. Will he make the best decisions in those very few seconds available in a match? Is he always going for a pass to the centre-forward or is he flexible and aware that sometimes he needs another pass? It shows their ability to find different options in different situations.”

Another dimension is competitiveness – which is described as the tendency to always lean towards winning games.

“What we look at is how they react when they lose. They shouldn’t do too well. So we try to see how affected they are when losing.”

So you need to be a bad loser?

“Definitely. From a mental point of view you need to handle it, to cope with defeats, because it is going to happen. But you want players who don’t want to experience that too often. If they get too used to losing, if they cope with it well, it is not a good sign. They need to feel so sad and bad. But they need to find a way to deal with disappointment.” says David.

Needs much more attention

He explains that his experience so far, which has primarily been gained from looking at academies in England and France, is that the academies in England are rather focused on the mental part of the game, whereas this is not given the same attention in France.

“I believe it is about culture. In France they are a bit reluctant to adapt to things from the academic world. In England the tradition is different, so you will see many psychologists working for the academies in England. But still we believe this area needs much more attention, and they need to be aware how much they can do in this area,” he says.

Predicta Football is offering clubs one-shot assessments of players; or to follow cohorts of young players over one or several seasons. The company, 100 per cent owned by Morgan, also offers talent development services while working within clubs.

“In these situations, we either sell single potential assessments, or packages, including several consecutive assessments, over one or more seasons.”

He hopes the tool will be widely recognised and used as a reference, so that any player can be compared to others and use the test outcome to convince clubs and agents to hire him/her.

At the moment, Predicta Football is working with one of the biggest players’ agents in France to integrate PREDICTA into a tool which would make players’ assessments and transactions more reliable and efficient.

It took Tom Vernon less than half a minute to explain how Danish Superliga side FC Nordsjaelland (FCN) turn three to five talents into established first-team players year after year.

That ability produced global recognition for Vernon's club, especially when CIES Football Observatory awarded the title of "Youngest Team in Europe" to the Danish team two years in a row - their average player being just 21.36 years old.

That figure stands out against all the teams from the 30 leagues in the survey, but what makes it impressive is the fact that the club manage to compete at the top of the Danish league year after year.

They are one of just four Danish clubs to have secured top-six positions in the league for ten of the last 12 seasons, not to mention being crowned champions a few times too. They have even qualified for European football on several occasions.

Belief

One would suspect that the story behind the club's continued success in developing kids into established first-team players would be a complex one about scouting, culture, governance, training, leadership, and ownership - an intricate, time-consuming story with a myriad of components, each of which needs to fall perfectly into place to create the success we see. And you might not be wrong.

But, according to Vernon, there is one thing that makes all the difference: belief.

At FCN, young players actually believe that they will get their chance. And that's it. That's the secret.

"First of all, we have a high turnover in the first team, which means there is always space in the team. Some of our first-team players are being sold every summer, so we need players to step in and take over. And that helps a lot. Secondly, and obviously this part is absolutely vital, the players whom we want to take over and play in the first team are our own talents," explains Tom Vernon.

That took about 25 seconds to explain, if you're keeping track.

They actually play matches

The young players can be 100 per cent certain that every summer between three and five players from the academy will be promoted to the first team. And not just to the squad either - they are expected to be part of the starting 11 and to make a difference from day one.

"Every player in our academy who is 15 years old knows that within a few years the door will open for them. It is not just something we tell them. It happens. They can see it with their own eyes: their mates from the U/17 team or U/19 team, players they might play against in training once in a while, are being promoted to the first team. And they actually play matches. Many matches. Against the top teams in Denmark.

"These players, who are just a few years older than themselves, they get a proper chance to show what they can do. And when we give them the opportunity to play football at the highest level in Denmark, they tend to show us, themselves, their friends in the academy, and their parents, that they are good enough. They show everyone that they have what it takes."

Are they truly focused when it comes to their daily work to prepare themselves to be first-team players? Or are they being distracted all the time because deep inside they know that they will never play in the first team, and therefore they need to mentally prepare for something else?

And he adds:

"And ask yourself, when this is happening, how does it influence the mindset of these boys, who are only 15 years old? I think they really understand, deep inside, that we need them. That we trust them. And that they will be given the chance to be a professional footballer at our club if they continue to work hard. That understanding is the key - at a pretty young age they believe that their time is coming. So, they have a few years to prepare, they know we are not faking it, and when the time is up, they are ready."

Low ceiling

Tom Vernon recognises that running a successful academy is a combination of many things, of many people's hard work over many years, but to him the big difference between FCN and many other clubs is the hard fact that the FCN players know that they will play. It is just a matter of time.

"Most academies have an extremely low ceiling for the vast majority of their players. Perhaps one or two players get promoted to the first team every year, but even then they are often not given a real chance. They might play a few matches, but if they make mistakes, and young players make mistakes, they are dropped, and thus very seldom do you see homegrown players make it at the top level.

"So, my question is: Where is the belief in the young talents all around Europe? Do these young talents really believe that they will play? Are they truly focused when it comes to their daily work to prepare themselves to be first-team players? Or are they being distracted all the time because deep inside they know that they will never play in the first team, and therefore they need to mentally prepare for something else?"

Some of our readers might say: "Fair enough. FCN can create first-team players ready to compete in Denmark. But they can't necessarily take the FCN model and make it work in the Premier League or LaLiga because the quality of football is so high that a team with so many youngsters wouldn't be able to compete." How would you respond to them?

"Well, I am sure that our standard is higher than any U/23 team in the Premier League. Meaning that, if our first team played any U/23 team from England, we would consistently be the better team. But I agree that obviously it takes a lot to be 18 years old and playing on the first team for Spurs, Liverpool, or Real Madrid. However, I think this is a discussion about the whole structure of academies and whether it is broken or not. I would argue that it is broken. At least in England."

A complicated discussion

All the major clubs in England have huge academies but very, very seldomly do young players make a breakthrough at the club where they were brought up. Vernon thinks that is a big problem.

"I admit that it is a complicated discussion because it depends on what you want in the long run. You need to ask yourself: Why do we have these academies? I think it is obvious that most of the clubs can't defend the amount of money they are spending on their academies. So, in that sense, the system doesn't work, because they don't promote players to their own first team. They loan out players to smaller clubs. And maybe that is okay. I would just develop a different structure, and I think this is also why more and more teams in England are talking about developing a model where they only have an U/23 team and no academy."

What's more, the academic education is also very important to us, so if they don't make it as footballers, we have a strong track-record proving that we can help them get into some of the best universities in the world. Our students from Ghana have collected more than $50 million of scholarships.

According to Vernon, there is a clear movement towards ending the current structure in which the big clubs sign many players to their academies yet very, very few of them ever become part of the first team.

Their careers often go wrong

"There is so much talent accumulated within just a very few top clubs in England. We have seen so many promising talents from Scandinavia go to these top clubs, but they tend to come back after three, four or five years, having failed to make it over there. And their development suffers from this. So, I think the current model results in the loss of many interesting players who could have done a magnificent job at many other clubs, but their careers often go in the wrong direction when they realise that they won't make it in one of the top teams."

You talk of your vision to build academies all over the world. Why would a talented young English player go to a Right To Dream Academy in England instead of signing for, say, Manchester City or Chelsea?

"Well, I don't know yet if we would be able to convince this young player and his parents that he should play for us. But I truly believe that we have something to offer when we can promise these kids that they will be given the best football education they can get. What's more, the academic education is also very important to us, so if they don't make it as footballers, we have a strong track-record proving that we can help them get into some of the best universities in the world. Our students from Ghana have collected more than $50 million of scholarships. Furthermore, we provide them with a five-year deal. We recognise that it takes time, and we don't want to stop working with young talents just because they are going through a tough period. And, finally, they can see that every year we promote many talents to our first team. So, I reckon that we would have a good chance to attract some very talented footballers," explains Vernon.

Messi would be in

At this stage it is impossible to know when and how Right To Dream will drive operations around the globe, but like Tom Vernon said in another interview, they are putting together the last pieces of the puzzle that will make their academy's success replicable all over the world.

One important thing to mention, if you want to understand the Right To Dream culture, is the way talents are scouted and recruited to the academies. According to Vernon, they look for talented footballers, obviously, but that is not the only important thing.

"We screen every kid for his or her potential academic skills - think of it, if you will, as their talent for obtaining knowledge. When it comes to our talent assessment, footballing skill is not the only thing we look at."

So, if the next Leo Messi came to a trial, and you saw his incredible talent, but his academic skills were very poor, you wouldn't take him?

"He would be in. But we also take in kids who are definitely not the biggest footballing talents. They have something else to offer. It could be excellent academic skills or special social skills. We need the right balance at the academy. Every year 25,000 kids go to the trial and only 20 get in. Statistically, it's easier to get into Harvard. And that's because we need to make sure that we have the right dynamic in the group, and we don't believe that the 20 best footballers will necessarily create the environment that we seek to achieve," says Vernon.

They caught the eye of most observers of European football when they were branded by the CIES Football Observatory as the "Youngest Team in Europe" for the second year in a row. FC Nordsjaelland (FCN), the Danish Superliga side located 20 kilometres north of Copenhagen in Farum, fielded the youngest line-up of the 31 European top-division leagues surveyed: the average player being just 21.36 years old.

In Denmark, however, no one was surprised when they saw the ranking. Managers, pundits, and players - they all used to look at FCN with dumbfounded expressions on their faces as the club sold their best players year after year.

It happened every summer: big clubs from Italy, Germany, Holland, and Turkey came in and acquired the Danish club's best talent. One example could be Emre Mor, who was sold to Dortmund for €12 million back in 2016.

But that should not really be a surprise to anyone, because that is how it works in European football - if you are a club good at developing raw talent, then eventually those players will be sold to bigger clubs. Such clubs are the so-called "talent monetisers."

Cherry-picking

However, where FCN stand out from their competitors, both in Denmark and abroad, is in their behaviour after their biggest talents have left. Most other Danish clubs would go out and spend big on established players from other Danish clubs - and often they would go cherry-picking top players from Norway or Sweden too.

But FCN don't do that.

Last summer the top goal scorer in the Danish Superliga, Andreas Skov Olsen, was sold by FCN to Serie A side Bologna in a €6 million deal. But FCN didn't buy a replacement - they calmly relied on their own academy's players to take over from Skov Olsen. And when the media asked their manager, Flemming Pedersen, whether he was frustrated by losing his biggest asset and being left without a proven goal scorer in the squad, there was no moaning. At all.

On the contrary, Flemming Pedersen was one big smile, proud to see the local talent going to Italy and really excited to give new talents the opportunity to show everyone that they're good enough to play at the highest level in Denmark.

If he was concerned, you certainly couldn't see it on his face.

Always manage to compete

Today, almost one year later, Flemming Pedersen is still smiling, perhaps even wider. One of the talents who took over from Skov Olsen, the versatile 19-year-old midfielder Muhammed Kudus, is on the verge of a major transfer - media reports are saying that Everton, Dortmund, Fenerbahçe, Frankfurt, and Lazio all want to sign him. He has scored 11 goals this season. The other leading goal scorer at the club, 19-year-old Mikkel Damsgaard, has already been sold to Serie A outfit Sampdoria for €6.7 million.

A few years ago, pundits consistently predicted that FCN would struggle to stay in the league because they always shipped off their best players and never really bought any replacements.

Those predictions are nowhere to be found these days - because everyone in Danish football knows that when FCN say they trust their own academy players, they are serious, and their league positions are proving them right too. They are one of just four Danish clubs who secured top-six positions in the league for nine of the last 11 seasons. They always manage to compete at the highest level, and they have even qualified for European football a few times.

Tom Vernon is the chairman at FC Nordsjaelland, who were purchased by a non-profit company founded by a group of investors brought together by Vernon. The investors were a group of people who wanted to support the development of young people who could have a career in football - or beyond. There is a no dividend policy among the group, so any profits earned are retained and reinvested into the club for future growth, and no interest is paid on injected capital either. All the investors want is to provide opportunities to young footballers - and get their money back at some point.

They all failed

Vernon and the group acquired almost 98 per cent of the shares in FC Nordsjaelland back in December 2015. According to Danish media reports, around €13.5 million was paid for the ownership of the club.

Prior to buying a club in Denmark, Tom Vernon had already founded a football academy in Ghana, but the Ghanaian academy needed a club that would be their gateway to Europe, and after some years of research, Vernon decided to go for a Danish club as he felt that the talents from Ghana could compete in the Danish Superliga. And the quality of the league would ensure an opportunity for talents to shine and, as a result, Vernon could collect transfer fees that would fund and continuously develop the academies in both Ghana and Denmark.

They can actually build a model where all their players at the academies learn about the world. About values. About themselves. I hear quite often that players today are really confused about this expectation that they should be role models to kids. They ask questions like, 'What does it mean to be a role model?' I think that is a massive problem. So, let's educate our young players while we have the opportunity.

According to Vernon, FCN spend around €6.5 million a year on their academy programme, far more than any of their competitors in Scandinavia. But still Tom Vernon wants to expand his academy model - and his ambitions are global.

"All the clubs I am aware of who have tried to build a chain of football academies have failed. I am not the one to say why they didn't succeed, but we aim to do it. We are on the verge of having our model ready to take the next step and build a number of academies around the world," Vernon tells offthepitch.com.

He explains that FCN are comfortable with the operational model - they know the methods that create great footballers and great students. But the cultural aspect - which is very important - is the last thing they need to look at.

Scholarships of more than $50 million

"We know that our players need to visit the different academies around the world. It gives them so much to go to another country and meet with something completely different than what they are used to. When they have tried that on a number of occasions, then suddenly it is not that hard for a 20-year-old talent to move to Holland and perform in the Eredivisie. But we need to build the right organisation around all this, and we need the right partners - and that is what we are working on at the moment."

As the name of the academy in Ghana suggests, the motivation for Vernon is to give as many children around the world "The Right To Dream."

"Our students from Ghana have collected scholarships of more than $50 million since we started the academy 20 years ago. More than 80 of the 250 students have either graduated from a university in the US or are at this stage studying at some of the best universities in the US.

"Around 50 of the students from Ghana went on and became professional players - most of them in Europe. These numbers are great, but we would like to give the opportunity to many more children around the world. It is as simple as that. All the profits we make will be invested to grow our academies and thereby educate many more children," says Vernon.

He acknowledges that not all clubs have the same objective as FCN and that many other clubs have shareholders who expect to see a yearly return on their investment.

But whether you're in the game to make profits or not, Tom Vernon believes that if you want to build an academy - an academy where you manage to actually turn young prospects into first-team players in some of the best leagues in Europe - you need to look at the players as human beings. Not as footballers. Or assets that you need to develop.

He was changing things

"We believe in the education of the whole person. The purpose-driven athlete is what we try to create and you can't do that if you focus solely on football skills."

Why is it important that they have a purpose beyond football? Aren't they supposed to be great footballers who inspire the fans through their skills on the pitch?

"Many years ago, I met George Weah, the former star striker from Liberia. I was so lucky that I got to know him really well. He was very clear that his voice had the ability to create changes in Africa, perhaps more than anyone else's because of his background as a footballer. And he was changing things. His role in supporting refugees during the war between Sierra Leone and Liberia is an untold story. But his impact was massive.

"He is one of the original purpose-driven athletes of the world. After I had talked to him, I was convinced that was what I wanted to do. I was a football fan, and I love football and I love to win, but I want our players to make a difference in society, because they have the ability to do so through their careers as footballers."

George Weah is currently serving as the 25th president of Liberia.

Tom Vernon speaks about The Last Dance, the Netflix series about Michael Jordan, when explaining why it is so obvious to him that clubs - and players - should do much more than just entertain their fans by playing matches.

"I remember this scene in the series where he was asked: 'So, what did you do off the court?' And you can't stop comparing Jordan to LeBron James because he had been doing so many things to make a difference for people around the world. And I don't know exactly what happened after they made the series with Michael Jordan, but I noticed that recently he did donate $100 million to the Black Lives Matter campaign. I think he found out that he can really make an impact," says Vernon.

His parents did a good job

Vernon was also caught by surprise when Marcus Rashford joined the debate in England about free school meals during the summer in the UK.

"That was brilliant - to see him jump into this debate. And I was so happy to see the difference he made. Why did he do that? Probably because his parents did a great job raising him. But not all players are that fortunate.

"This is where I think clubs have massive potential to make a difference. They can actually build a model where all their players at the academies learn about the world. About values. About themselves. I hear quite often that players today are really confused about this expectation that they should be role models to kids. They ask questions like, 'What does it mean to be a role model?' I think that is a massive problem. So, let's educate our young players while we have the opportunity."

Vernon, who used to be on the terraces when Wycombe Wanderers played in the 1980s, talks about the likes of Paul Gascoigne and Tony Adams as people he could relate to when he was young.

"The guys that I grew up loving, Gascoigne and Adams, these kinds of guys, you felt like you knew them. Maybe mostly because they had a good time and partied too much. But they were just part of society. Then we went through this hyper-individualistic period where players were turned into brands. No one could see them or meet them anymore because they were hidden away behind these big walls, and they were inaccessible and there was much less traction.

"And then there came the inevitable rejection of that, in some ways at least. Do I want to go back to players partying and being part of the community again? I don't think they should drink that much alcohol, but I want my players to engage with the community, like we have seen Juan Mata do. Like Weah did. And Drogba. These kinds of guys inspire me. This is how I can leverage my position to have an impact. I think, as a football fan, that's what I want my footballers to stand for."

Didn't want to use shuttle busses

To Vernon it comes as no surprise that most stars today are too busy flashing their diamond earrings and their big cars on Instagram to find time to worry about making a difference.

They should learn to clean the classroom that they have slept in for four days instead

"I won't say that this is what they learn at the academies, but I think that part of the explanation here is what the young talents learn from a very young age. What they get used to. Every summer we take our kids to a great football youth tournament in Gothenburg, Sweden. The biggest in Europe. We absolutely love it, and the quality of the teams is superb.

"I have asked some clubs from England why they don't attend and they said that they did not go because they, for example, could not have their own busses at the tournament. They didn't want to use the shuttle busses that are at the heart of the logistics when players go from one pitch to another. But I really don't get that.

"Why is it important to have your own air-conditioned bus? They also didn't like the fact that the players were sleeping in classrooms at schools. Come on! Why should under-19 teams stay in five-star hotels? Kids shouldn't be treated like Premier League players. They should learn to clean the classroom that they have slept in for four days instead.

"We have our 13-year-old Danes from FCN in Ghana washing their own clothes when they visit The Right To Dream Academy there. And we have our Ghanaian and Danish players cleaning their locker rooms after they've used them at international tournaments in Japan and the rest of the world. That's how we do it, and we believe that is the right way to educate young people - footballers or not."

With football clubs at all levels suffering during the coronavirus crisis, cash flow and balance sheets have come under unprecedented pressure. Resources have to be prioritised, meaning that funds may have to be reallocated. This could come at the cost of maintaining an effective academy, even if the club has derived great benefits from the development of young talent in the past.

Historically, Valencia CF have reaped the rewards of one of Spain’s most productive academies. Among the most successful graduates include Manchester City’s David Silva, Isco of Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund’s Paco Alcacer.

The latest sought-after talent to emerge from the academy is 20 year-old Ferran Torres, already rated as a € 50 million-plus player and someone who has caught the eye of La Liga and Premier League giants.

Widely acknowledged as Spain’s “fourth club”, the development of home-grown players enables Valencia to be competitive at home and abroad. But how much damage has been done to the academy concept at top level football clubs like Valencia during this troubled year?

“With a diminishing budget for most clubs, there may be a big temptation to shift resources from the academy to focus entirely on the first team or to invest in youths who are close to breaking into the first team,” says Sean Bai, director of the Valencia academy. 

Bai adds that club reactions to the post-lockdown world will, to a great degree, depend on their philosophy and the part that player development plays in their culture.

“Academy investments are likely to pay-off over the long-term, so only clubs with a firm belief in the benefits of a thriving academy will persist with investment in tough times.”

"Player factory"

We asked Valencia for details of their current and future financial commitment to their academy, but information of this nature is confidential. Nevertheless, there is clearly a big appetite for nurturing talent at the club, who had a revenue of £188 million in their latest accounts – an impressive growth compared to the £102 million in turnover in 2017. Valencia also recorded a small profit after tax in 2019 compared to a loss of £27 million in 2017.

But while Valencia have received significant transfer income from the sale of home-grown players, they are not seeking to become a “player factory” for bigger clubs to pick and choose the next outstanding youngster.

“Our focus is on developing players into professionals and hoping they can progress to our first team. That’s why we were ranked the fifth most productive academy among the big five leagues by CIES Football Observatory in 2019,” says Marco Otero, academy technical director.

The current Valencia first team squad has more than half a dozen players who progressed through their system, including José Luis Gayá and Carlos Soler.

Valencia’s investment in their academy include education programmes for the players. Otero says the success of these programmes and the academy overall is difficult to measure.

“Academies are unlike manufacturing where they are able to maintain and expect a consistent quality of product. For us, we view our results in a broader sense – this includes players making it to the first team, players becoming professionals and those that become industry experts. That is our return on investment.”

Looking at the hard numbers Valencia recorded a profit of more than £70 million on player sales – that number was down to £36 million last year. It is unclear whether this is down to the club holding on to their biggest talents or whether bids from other clubs have simply been lower.

Refocus on youth development

The club conducts regular reviews throughout the academy and applies two methods of evaluation – assumption reversal, which challenges all preconceived notions about what constitutes best practice and disruptive innovation, which explores innovative ways to create new opportunities for the academy.

“For example, while it is logical to expect talent from the wider community to move to the city to join the academy, our approach is to establish our programmes away from the city to open-up greater potential,” says Otero.

In the middle of last year, we recognised that despite the increase in top sports facilities, children have stopped playing football in the streets and parks.

While some clubs may decide to scale back their academy when normal service is resumed, the prospect of a stagnated transfer market may become the catalyst for change and force a refocus on youth development. Bai is sceptical:

"It would be a big positive if clubs do eventually turn to young players but it also depends on whether young players are committed to the club. If they only stay because there is no big contract coming from elsewhere, this is the risk of the player being distracted from football.”

At the same time, Bai sees some academies possibly “normalising” salaries in an uncertain economic environment.

“Clubs that are able to stabilise salaries could benefit in the long-term, attracting players more interested in the quality of the club and academy rather than contractual offers. This will allow the academy to sell their offering and not overfocus on the salary range.”

Meet changing habbits

Essentially, the Valencia academy is seen as an important element in the community, especially over the past few months when people have not only missed their football, but also fretted about the future of their favourite sport.

Otero believes the club has a responsibility to help football become part of everyday life and before additional worries brought on by the pandemic surfaced, Valencia had identified a need to meet changing habits.

“In the middle of last year, we recognised that despite the increase in top sports facilities, children have stopped playing football in the streets and parks. So, we redesigned our programmes to maximise playing time and contact time children have with football. We have also rolled these out across our regional, national and international academy partners.”

Bai adds that the concept of community is vital for Valencia and believes the academy can help people recover from the lockdown through the medium of football.

“Everyone is a stakeholder and to overcome crises, we have to move forward together. This is why we are dedicated towards community service and we participate in many projects.”

Valencia’s owner, Peter Lim, donated 50,000 surgical masks and thermometers for frontline workers at the height of the crisis and the club has set-up a food bank in the Mestalla Stadium. 

Technology has certainly helped  people navigate the crisis and going forward, the academy can expect to leverage the investments it has made hardware.

“Although the impact of Covid-19 is in inevitable, we explored and implemented the use of technology in the academy much earlier than most. This has included analysis platforms and virtual training sessions which have been encouraging and very positive. And it has allowed our players, technical staff and employees to stay in close contact. The academy has been a key pillar of the club for some time and we receive strong support from the club in developing the next generation of professionals, so the sudden increase in pressure and expectation has been met almost seamlessly,” says Otero.