Tom Vernon: Giving everyone a Right to Dream

[Music] Welcome to the training ground guru podcast in association with Huddl. In every episode we bring you insights into the teams behind the teams in professional football. Coming up on today's episode. You know our core philosophy is that we believe everyone has the right to dream and that's something that applies to you know to every person on the planet with with everybody's individual hopes and aspirations and some of the journeys and outcomes that our kids achieve can be kind of inspirational for anybody really and so the way that we're thinking about the brand is how can that kind of transcend football academies and and football clubs so say academies clubs and the brand are the three areas that we focus on on growing and kind of define who we are. I'm Simon Austin from training ground guru and our guest on this episode is Tom Vernon. Tom is the founder and group CEO of right to dream. This is a genuinely unique organisation. Built on the belief that excellence can be found anywhere. Tom launch right to dream in Ghana in 1999 and has since opened academies in the USA and Egypt as well as buying a club in Denmark the table topping FC Norgeland. Tom told me about his journey and that of right to dream and what he hopes football as a whole can learn from them. I hope you enjoy the episode and if you do please give us a follow via your podcast provider. Thanks very much for joining us on the podcast of A Tom. No my pleasure to be here and obviously listen to the podcast a little bit but certainly you know a lot of the print stuff that you do is massively valuable to me and to our organisation so it's great to be here. Oh that's brilliant thank you. How would you describe right to dream for someone who's never heard of it? The philosophy academy level is that we believe in development of excellent culture through our character programs and our purpose programs. We believe in the development of the excellence in academics through our curriculums and our pathways and then we obviously believe in excellence in development in football. So a holistic model to development that is long term commitment for every child and then trying to create the right pathway for every kid that's coming through our academy is not just the ones that get into football. So in a nutshell that's how I talk about the academy but then obviously right stream group has gone into purchasing clubs as well and bought our first club seven years ago now in Denmark with FC Norgeland and there we see our clubs to continue those principles that I outlined at academy level but also we see ourselves as kind of universities of football where you can come and take that final sort of step before really going out. I think in a Barcelona one said it nicely when they described their first team as their oldest academy team and maybe they've drifted away from that a little bit but we certainly think about our clubs in that kind of space and then the last big piece of right to dream is that we think that our broader brand and message has potential to inspire people who may be on in football or professional football but our core philosophy is that we believe everyone has the right to dream and that's something that applies to every person on the planet with everybody's individual hopes and aspirations and some of the journeys and outcomes that our kids achieve can be kind of inspirational for anybody really and so the way that we're thinking about the brand is how can that kind of transcend football academies and football clubs so you know say academies clubs and the brand are the three areas that we focus on growing and kind of define who we are. Going all the way back to the genesis of right to dream which I think was the late 90s. Could you just tell us a bit more about that please? Yeah you know I worked out pretty young I grew up in in high-wickum season ticket holder at Wiccom Wanderers loved the game from really young and realised pretty young that I wasn't ever going to be good enough to play and so I started my coaching badges when I was 16 and you know and progressed through that fairly quickly and in that in that time you know jobs in football really felt like the preserve of ex-prose and so I was trying to figure out how to get into the game and and had a connection to someone in Ghana who was connected with the biggest club in Ghana at the time pass of oak even though half the country would dispute they were the biggest club they were and went down there on a coaching opportunity and through and through a series of events kind of got connected with the young players in my community and and started a youth team in in in my community and saw saw kind of first hand the challenges that they were facing to fulfill that potential and thought I could make a difference and at the same time saw the likes of fire-nord and iaxon red bull spending a lot of money and as it transpired ill-advisedly and I felt at the time kind of ill-advisedly on trying to develop talent so started started right to dream from very sort of humble beginnings with the first 16 players that that we picked moving into our house and and it was really kind of grassroots effort but at the same time seeing pretty big investments coming in that the subsequently you're you know would be described as failures and seeing how sort of European football was getting it wrong and and that caused a lot of kind of what I describe as unlearning and and relearning for me as a as a white English guy trying to have an impact in in Africa about how to approach things so you know started starting to build our own thing and learning from others and and you know year every I always at Christmas parties I say that it's always been our best year and that for 23 years in a row has been the case and and so every year we continue to learn and continue to try and modify our model and our interpretation of what an academy should look like so started really basic and and yeah it's grown grown to where it is today how were clubs getting it wrong in Africa though that's all um I think they had an extractive mindset which was you know that you can set something set something up in Ghana and then you can take the pieces that you want and you can discard the rest and you know that's been a general theme from um from Europe towards Africa for 400 years and and and so you know this phrase kind of neo-colonial mindset is something that you could see in some of the trends of how of of how those people who you know often very good people just naive and not well considered enough in their strategies were coming around and you know I also feel I arrived in Ghana with a similar type of mindset um due to the way that we get brought up in the English public school system and um and and how our society is constructed in England anyway certainly if you're a white and middle class like I was so I think that sort of neo-colonial and and and and naive and extractive would be sort of themes of how you could see them behaving and and that was just really replicating the way that they did academies in in Europe but um but not enough consideration given to an entirely different context so you know what what I learned over time was that what we had to ask ourselves was how could we contribute to the national development agenda and what did the country need and how could we contribute towards that and so some examples of what that looks like is you know I started by just looking for the best players because I you know done my you know for training badges and thought that the solution I could make would be to try and produce a couple of you know good footballers but but obviously that you know meant that there would be many who wouldn't make it and and what about them so you know one of the first pieces was like okay let's let's build the education as as as good as we can and build relationships in America so that our kids could go to university if they weren't going to make it as footballism and at that time we had no idea where they were going to go as football as anyway you know it was basically just a youth team in a car but we tried the best we could with education and we built pathways in education and now we've raised over 50 million dollars of of educational scholarships in America and have and have kids attending you know Stanford and Ivy League schools and all that kind of stuff so that was part of trying to make more of a meaningful contribution and then we realized look if we're scouting in a community. We shouldn't just go in for the best male player, we should look at girls as well and that's how we found it and still run the only residential girls football academy. I think anywhere in the world. And then we also realized that when we understood the American system that some of our players who might not make it as pros, that could be a pathway. But if we were in the community and we academically tested all the kids, we might find some incredibly bright kids who were good enough at football to end up going to the world's best universities. So we added that into our into our philosophy in the desire to make the best contribution we could to Ghana. And so now we admit kids in who we hope that they might be able to play professional football and so do they. But what we know is that they're going to be able to get a world class education for free. And whether they play pro or not are going to be able to be able to go on and do amazing things and we hold George wear up as a huge example at writer dream and he was one of my first mentors in Africa. You know, somebody who can win the ball on door and then go back to university and become president of their country. And so all those kind of like multiple recruitment strategies and the kind of people that we role model at writer dream was our way of saying, you know, we want to try and make we want to be part of Ghana's development and we want to try and make the best contribution that we can rather than. You know, replicating a model which is fundamentally broken in Europe anyway in Africa, you know, that doesn't make a lot of sense. So all those things have kind of evolved and matured and we apply them into different places in different ways and and in Egypt that's the question that we're asking ourselves is is is how can we contribute and in America. Here's the same thing, you know, where the pay everybody I meet in American soccer is saying the pay to play system is the problem. So we're saying, well, how can we come in and and and make a contribution there. So that's that's how we sort of driver our thinking and and reason for being. And what sort of level of club are you looking at would it even be like MLS level. Yeah, fantastic. And when do you think we might get some more news on that. As soon. And this is a big problem and a big issue in the English system at the moment, isn't it where all the kids who don't make it as pro footballers, which is the vast majority. What then happens to them, you know, have they had good experiences. So it applies over here as well. So and you know, one of the things that I think is amazing is is if you you know, you can sit down anywhere in America with a with a 60 year old man or woman and they still talk with pride about being a graduate of the university that they went to. So that affiliation with their, you know, that brand and that experience last a lifetime. And really, if you look at the experiences that academies are offering young boys typically not many girls getting those opportunities. It's a phenomenal experience to, you know, travel the world, find out how to push yourself to achieve your very best, make friends, you know, being in an environment that teaches you about so many things. So why, why, you know, even at 22, a lot of a lot of these lads are talking with a degree of bitterness about the experience that they had there, especially if they didn't make it let alone at 60 where they probably don't even reference it like, you know, a graduate of Duke or Stanford or whatever is still talking about it all the time. And so there's something like fundamentally wrong with the fact that the, you know, the majority of kids who don't make it aren't like proud brand ambassadors of the academy. And so, you know, what we're trying to do in terms of the holistic experience that we provide and the fact that in the environment. All of our kids and even the ones who may go on to become top players can see that we're trying to do the right thing for every kid means that, that, you know, hopefully they talk with more pride when they're out there, but we've also started to see which is really interesting like at the World Cup commentators seem to talk about the fact that our players who no longer play within our system. Graduates have right to dream much more than they talk about, you know, you know, you know, back of sack of being a graduate of the arsenal academy or, you know, or Jordan Henderson being a graduate of the Sunderland Academy or something like that, you know, we seem to get referenced all the time that that's where our kids have come from and our kids talk about that more than, then maybe others do and that for us is a sign that we're doing the right things, but. We're certainly far from satisfied in that regard and like have so much innovation and investment that we still need to drive into our environment to get them to the levels that we that we aspire to, which you know, as you can see as a theme is, you know, a lot of the things we're inspired by. The American kind of student athlete model rather than the European Academy model not that not that there's nothing to learn there, but. As you said, I think there is a lot that needs to change it seemed to me in England that the model is a little bit like a pyramid so a lot of hell of a lot of kids come in at the bottom and then hardly any make it through as time goes on was I know with right to dream you're very, very careful on you about who comes in at the start. And then you make a big commitment to them that you're going to then stick with them you know for a bit time yeah and that's for sure like we focus a lot on the recruitment because you know the opportunities that we have at the end are difficult to achieve it's difficult to get into a world class university, especially as a student athlete on scholarship and it's difficult to you know get into Fc and which is the youngest team in the world. And on the men's side and and on the women's side is aspiring to move in that direction as well. So we see or I see at least more like a path where a pipe where the bottom of the pyramid is the same is same with at the top so straight pipe and it's like everybody's going through. And everybody's going to find the right opportunity for them at the end rather than you know this pyramid just immediately kind of puts this idea in everybody's minds that you're going to get picked off an only a certain percentage can get there and. It's kind of thing that I think a lot of lazy coaches in the academy system say you know it's like you you know it's only it's only one percent of you that are going to make it and it's almost viewed as like that being responsible to kind of make them aware of the of the difficulty but I don't think that's responsible I think the responsibility is to. Is to change the system so that each kid feels like this is going to be something positive for my my growth and development and your recruitment days in garner sample incredible actually the number of kids who come along and then what they do when they're there. Yeah we're you know across across Africa now because we're in Egypt as well and and every coast we've got a hundred thousand kids coming to our trials every year and we're academically screening all of those kids and we've got some super talented. Scouts who are also looking for sort of character indicators at the first phase but then we run a then we run a sort of a process where we then run regional trials and then we run final trials and within the high academic staff and our past for staff are all engaged to make a holistic decision around academic potential character potential and then footballing potential and. You know one of the things I've learned which is super hard to build into any talent ideas that like soul really matters and you can see like soul for kids who have a sort of a joy for life and an ability to connect with people and a desire to squeeze the most out of every situation that they get into. And so I believe that's a really like interesting thing for our future as well and and we haven't got into it properly yet we talk about it but it's more informal of like what what would soul scouting look like and and and and I think if we all think about the players that we loved you know. I like canton are that I loved and and and gather in my youth is like there was some soul and extra like passion you know there that inspires the fans and can change a game and all those things so we like to keep a look out for that that kind of stuff as well but that sort of that's on the fringes is it's not not caught. Scouting and sort of talent ideas very very difficult isn't it really is there a bit of a risk it can become a bit subjective as well or are you very aware of that. We're building a team you know we've employed them ahead of a global recruitment called he and Yates who we very deliberately recruited with it he started in football but it's had a long time out of football and because the because the context in in our four markets is so wildly different we wanted someone who. you know, had been thinking in multiple ways. sports in multiple ways because you can't have like a universality to the way that we approach things. What we're very clear on is that we want to go to places which are overlooked and places where people might believe that excellence doesn't exist. We need to drive some core philosophical themes through our recruitment, which is what he ends doing really well. Then we need adaptability. So we're building a group of global scouts who we hopefully, first of all, can provide with a life-changing experience of being able to scout in upper Egypt in Luxor, which is probably the most incredible place I've been in my life, but also in Northern Ghana or in Andin Copenhagen and then in different communities in America, but apply like our unique philosophy to different environments. And so within like within a few months of starting in Egypt, we found like a brilliant scout called Amra who was just in a local community. Football environment is now in Ghana and scouting there and going to other places in the world. So Ian's job is to build like a global team of scouts who can apply that overarching philosophy into many different kind of diverse and often challenging communities. And I suppose you've made it sound quite easy really, the growth of right to dream there and the evolution, but it must have been incredibly difficult just to set the academy up in the first place, wasn't it? Entrepreneurship in Africa is as tough as it gets and you know, I was fortunate in some ways to enjoy some white privilege in regard to my you know, my journey as an entrepreneur in Africa, that you know, that is in some really simple things like I was talking to my executive assistant the other day and we're making the plan for the month and I needed to be this is a trip I'm on at the moment I needed to go from London to Monaco to Istanbul to Hantalia to Accra to to California in in the space of two weeks now if you're an African entrepreneur that will take you five months to plan from a visa perspective. So you know, there was like simple things in terms of a British passport which made things easier and then you know, access to finance which for me was a massive challenge but again like I still feel like I was given some preferential treatment because you know money feels a little bit more secure often with a guy like me asking for it and so you know, basic things for African entrepreneurship are just wildly difficult and I'm still just building an appreciation for that and and have so much respect for anybody anybody who can make business work in Africa. So but we still you know, in relation to finance and in relation to the way that FIFA has structured the global game which prohibits the development of the African game in some very very clear ways. So you're so you're up against access to capital, you're up against a system that feels like it's designed to stop African football being successful as you know, as a couple of starting points and then you know, one of the big things as I've been games was like my own lack of ability and knowledge as it as an early 20 something trying to make something happen. So you know, I was as kicked out of school and so had very very little kind of skill set to run a business even though my parents you know, gave me the absolute best that they could when I was younger. And so all of those things meant you know that that it was an uphill battle as well. So you're definitely right in saying that it was you know that it was a challenge but you know, we managed to we managed to stick at it and I guess if you haven't got many many options in life, it's easier to stick at something and I was probably in that category. What were you kicked out of school for? Well, it was described as the straw that broke the camel's back so it wasn't particularly, it wasn't particularly like headline grabbing story but I was you know, the interesting thing is that I'm really dyslexic and and and I've come to value that attribute that I have maybe more than anything else and and my youngest son is and I'm delighted about the fact that he is and you know, I think awareness around the strengths of dyslexia are really starting to filter into the mainstream. You know, guys I Richard Branson and organizations that made by dyslexia kind of really educating certainly the UK and I know it's really strong in America especially New York that as a dyslexic you have the ability to join dots up in a different way, you have a ability to communicate in a different way and you know, it's such a high percentage of successful entrepreneurs that is dyslexic and you know, when I was 11 I was running two businesses at my school and nobody nobody like recognized it or encouraged it and then you know, they both faded out because there was no support so I think that was probably like the biggest thing going for me is that I could see the longer term I could connect dots where other people maybe still couldn't and I'm still not good enough when I'm kind of connecting dots with the future right-to-dream explaining to my my team why I think these dots kind of join up and then you know, not that not all the time but quite often they kind of end up joining up and and and I don't say you see I told you so but it's kind of like I still can't explain properly like why I see certain certain patterns and things but that's my kind of that's my skill set that I add to right-to-dream now and we've managed to bring like brilliant people in to do so many of the things that you know, I used to do not particularly well in the early days of right-to-dream but now they can come in and add like unbelievable quality across sort of the 300 staff that we have. There are a lot of successful people that have been expelled from school as well and it comes up time and time again. Yeah yeah and I would say that you know there'll be a very direct correlation to neurodiversity within that because you know my eldest son is autistic and my youngest is dyslexic and and all the support that they get to me feels like it's support to help them to conform and I don't want them to conform to the the system because they're never going to excel there so what I want is is for the power of their neurodiversity to be developed to his fullest and and and that is what I'm just super lucky that I fell into something that allowed that to happen for me but and I'm also really privileged to have got into a situation where I can kind of firstly understand with my kids but also you know invest in managing the situation where I can create unique opportunities for them as well but for a lot of kids you know across the world learning support for neurodiversity is still about helping you to conform into the system rather than make the most of yourself and in that regard we're missing like so much ability to take our communities and our society forwards and you know I probably never get around to it but I think something that is around like profiling of expelled expelled students and and then path and then building pathways for them could produce unbelievable results you know even if you look at that purely as a just as a business concept or other than anything sort of more more CSRE I think it makes a lot of sense and you do see like MI5 and NASA and some of the most progressive organizations now are mandating that is certain percentage of their workforce need neurodiversity so I think I think certainly in in the more progressed Western nations they're understanding that they can't solve the problems that they're facing with the A type conformist and that they need it and that they need a different perspective on things and but it's got a long way to go and did you always have very strong beliefs about fairness and equality and opportunity as well even as a young man well you know I touched on it before that you know if you grow up as a as a white English middle class kid then the system is not fair at all right and we're the ones who got the best of it and so I think you grew up with a fairly warped opinion of what's fair if you grew up in you know in in in the way that I do and then you know I'm still on a journey with this so I'm certainly not talking about anything that I have a sort of complete answer to but the level of unfairness that I see directed to towards Africa and towards emerging brands from Africa and emerging stories from Africa is absolutely mind blowing and the you know the almost immovable preconceived notions of what Africa and excellence in Africa stands for you know has got so far to go I don't even know if it's possible. And so, I certainly learn a lot about fairness on my journey. And I can't really remember what I, when I thought, when I was young, I probably thought it was unfair if I couldn't have like an Nintendo PlayStation or something. But I'm proud of being part of trying to achieve a bit more equality and fairness within football and for the gunnames and future nationalities that come into it. But it's certainly a rigged system in my point of view. And is that down to prejudice on the part of Western countries or is there also an element of trying to keep Africa down or is it both of those things? Is both of those things. And if we take it back into football, the first time, if I'm born in Niger and I'm a potential world-class footballer, the first time that I can get access to an A-Lycems coach and a grass pitch is at the age of 18, according to FIFA law. Oh, really, right. And that's because you're not allowed to move below the age of 18. So if I'm a mathematician or a pianist or a ballet dancer in Niger, obviously, it's still very difficult for me. But I'm not legally restricted to move to pursue my passion. Whereas in football, I am. And then secondly, if I'm looking for exposure, for the last many, many years, Africa has 54 countries and only four slots at the World Cup. Europe has less than that number of countries and around 13 slots at the World Cup. It is nicer than X World Cup that Africa actually going to have 11 slots. So I think there has been a little bit of progress there. But those are just like a couple of headline examples. And then we were talking to a club recently who wanted to buy one of our players. And this gives another little insight. And they bought a similar player in a similar position over similar ability. But he was Brazilian. And they offered us 60% of what they'd paid for the other player. And I asked, why is that? And they said, oh, it's because he's a Brazilian. And I said, you're saying it to the wrong person because our mission is to uplift Bran Garner. So you can forget about it. It's not happening if that's your perception. So those are maybe just some anecdotal things of why I know that the system is rigged. But then the subconscious bias, the way that that's developed within the West towards Africa, the stories that we still tell. And there's a massive legacy. The things that you and I were told by Bob Geldoff in the '80s, we still play those songs in the supermarket today. And if you stop and listen to the lyrics, things like the only water that flows in Africa is the tears of the people. And do they even know it's Christmas? I mean, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear. It's quite hard to swear like what the fuck. And so those are all the things that-- and I catch myself, I'm in the supermarket, Christmas, still hum along to the song because it was so part of our youth. And all those things have reinforced like deep, deep misconceptions and subconscious biases. And in England, our class structure even compounds that. So all of those things mean that it's a huge uphill battle. And a really interesting book is why I'm no longer talking to why people about race. For a lot of people in Africa, they've kind of given up they don't care anymore, the West things, and this naive narrative. So in Ghana, we've got this kind of movement called The Year of the Return, which is really about African Americans, African diaspora returning to Ghana, building a better Ghana, and therefore driving a different narrative. And in Ruranda, we've got some pretty phenomenal leadership there for showing how it can be done. So I think Africa is moving into an exciting new phase. And if we take that back to football, that's going to be super exciting. And I think the brands that African football can develop are more appealing for a lot of players than playing for their national teams in Europe. If they've got dual nationality, you see with Morocco at the last World Cup, that 55% of their players were born outside of Morocco. And historically, that's being players who can't necessarily make it with their European team. But now you see with Hakeemian, these guys that walk into any team in the world, but chooses to go back for Morocco. And I think as Ghana and Nigeria and others develop, they'll start to develop their own players better with things like right to dream as well. But also attracts the next generation of Danny Wellbeck's and Bako's, Sackers and others to come back and play as well. So I think all of that stuff takes time. Ghana is only 70 something years old, if my mass is right, maybe a little bit less. And so these things take time, but they're powerful movements, which are going to be really exciting for African football. So the players that you referenced, do you think they feel more affiliation with the countries of their, as you call it, origin or heritage than the European countries? I mean, those players that I referenced, I don't know them. If we take Hakeemian example, then that's the decision he made, and he said, even though I was born in France, I made more, I felt more for Morocco, and that's why I made that decision. But as I saw an interview, Anthony Joshua recently, where he said, my nationality is English, but my culture is Niger. And that is something that is on the rise, and will lead to a lot of opportunities if African football and sport and culture structures itself, right? And in Ghana, from a cultural perspective, they're starting to do some really smart things, and the number of like a-list celebrities that you'll find in Ghana or Christmas from around the world has totally transformed as people are looking for identity connection and the chance to build something, I think. I think that England is actually a great example of doing it right, because in relation to football, I only talk about football, with what Garas South has done when I was growing up, the English national team, and some of the hooligan movies associated with it and everything else, there's a number of people who would describe the English national team as a representation of the national front in the '80s, and certainly the Windrush generation, and West African immigrants arriving in England would have felt that the national team was one of the strongest representations of the negativity that they felt in the UK. And so what Garath has done with the national team and going into the realities of its past and reconstructing the future is one of the most inspirational leadership stories within sport in the last 20 years. And I know a bit of what was done there from working with Pippa Grange, and that stuff is pretty inspiring for some of the things that we think about with our brand and our culture and where we're going as well. Do you think it's fair to describe right to dreamers sort of ultimate socialism, because it's about equality of opportunity on a big scale here. I haven't been asked that question. Obviously, I identify with things that you pull out in that question. You know, we believe that excellence can be found anywhere. And we believe that the world has a narrow view about what excellence is and where it can come from. And as a result, we believe that humanity has a lot of unfulfilled potential. And so that's what we're interested in. And I believe that a lot of the problems that the West is experiencing today, or more specifically the UK and the US, that they won't find the solutions internally and its diversity and looking beyond the obvious, which is going to help them find solutions, which do exist. And so, you know, we hope, you know, as you're taking it into that. that kind of sphere, hope that our graduates can be representations of something different and different solutions and different values and cultural constructs that could help. And I was wondering as well, is it ever hard allying that with capitalism? So where you need big investment to buy Fc, Norgeland or the academy in Egypt, have there ever sort of tensions there at all? Yeah, great question. And I talked about it in terms of seeing how clubs behaved in Africa and really capitalistic in their mindset. And even when we were trying to engage with clubs, feeling that was one of the reasons that drove us to buy our own club. It's still an ongoing tension. And when we made the partnership with the Mansour family, one of the inspiring things about Mr Mansour was that when his family started to make money, everybody else from Egypt would look east, west, north, in terms of west to invest and grow, but he looked south into sub-Saharan Africa. And so there was a connection there from that perspective. But one of the challenges we face is that when we buy clubs, and the fact that capitalism is not fair, right? It's not all bad, but it's not fair. And you have a kid who joins you when you're 11. And you play to a large degree the role of the family in that regard. And my parents didn't introduce me to capitalism. I left home and then found out how the world worked. And then when we own the clubs as well and then have to operate within that paradigm, we're kind of introducing our kids to capitalism. And then, you know, and whoever first introduces you to it can easily be. Then thought of as the one who's not fair, rather than the fact that capitalism isn't fair. And so sometimes you have these difficult situations where we're behaving in F.C.N. The most ethical way we're capable of within the constructs of capitalism. And our kids who are experiencing that for the first time are like, well, I don't think that's fair. And we're trying to say, well, it's not us. It's the system that we live within. And then they, you know, and then they sort of make recommendations about how capitalism could change. And we obviously can't do that. So, you know, all that stuff has been quite interesting and helps to drive. How we think about curriculum and the evolution of our curriculums and introducing our kids to the world. But, you know, your question is on the money that the tension between our essence and the world that we have to live in is kind of a daily, daily debate or daily fundamental thing for me and something which which with senior management, we talk about quite a lot. Because I've always massively admired the purpose of right to drink. Because I think maybe football and beyond a struggle with that sometimes. So football is about results and making money and it. That's not an inspiring purpose for a lot of people. No, you know, there's pockets of it that we, you know, the we admire. But if you don't go in the sort of capitalistic direction for your sustainability, then your option is to go in, you know, in more of a charitable direction to sustain what you do. And I think that the origin of charitable money is more is more cancerous than the origin of, of, of for profit money. And the independence that the for profit money offers while, you know, as we talked about is is is not total. And the greater independence than that of, of the charity world. And I actually think I, from a funding perspective could have moved quicker with right to dream if I built it as more of a charitable brand. But I believe today that that that would have seen ultimately are are downfall because Africa has always been framed within that charitable narrative. And you know, you wouldn't believe it that, that, you know, we still talk to some brands. And, you know, we can pitch this, you know, we can present the story of like Mohammed Caduce who, you know, dominates the World Cup and is probably on the way to winning Africa's best player over the next couple of years and, and a CMO will say, or if you spoke into our foundation. But if we tell the story of Mikhail Damzgad, who came through the Danish Academy and then scores the wonder goal in the semi final euros against England at Wembley. And that's part of a sponsorship pitch. No one would say, oh, have you spoken to the foundation about his journey. So, you know, the interpretation of that journey and an of elite of excellence is just is just really different, you know, where a lot of the decisions lie. And, and so if we, if we put right to dream. And we have, you know, received charitable money at points in our growth. But, you know, very consciously building our brand and our long term sustainability to not really play in that space, because I think the undertones of it are actually more dangerous. And what was the thinking behind by a New Zealand. And the thinking was that we wanted to control pathways for our players. And we wanted to prove that right to dreams philosophy could be adapted into any context. And so we're better than in, you know, in, you know, one of the most advanced. And so we have a lot of societies on many metrics, you know, in, in, in Denmark. And we also wanted to play with the team of homegrown teenagers or under 21s and compete at the top of the league. And so that eliminates a number of leagues. Denmark's like typically ranked. And so, you know, you can see some leagues in your roughly on co efficiency. And you can see some cases a little bit in like Austria and, and Switzerland, where it's possible to play young and slightly higher ranked leagues. But I'm not sure you, you know, you could do what you do. In, you know, in, in a lot of the top leagues. And so, you know, we were not really able to play the other day in a lot of young players and it was pretty inspiring. But. And, and then we also didn't have that much money. You know, we borrowed. We kind of borrowed the money in a, in a, in a debt equity deal from a, you know, really strong like long term. Support her of a writer dream. But, but we didn't have anyone who was looking to put a hundred million in. And then we also didn't want to go somewhere where we would be kind of pigeon hold into another African project and Belgium has seen so many of those cases that. And Portugal sees a lot of those cases, which are maybe a little bit more about. You know, just parking players rather than really developing something. And, and then we knew with FCN that they'd done a lot of work to build a strong academy. And it was just sort of coming to fruition. So those are sort of some of the reasons why I was even reading their the youngest team ever in a European league atop European league. Yeah, so it'd be nice to win the league and put another spout on top of that as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many rights to dream garden players are in that first team squad at the moment. A lot as just watching training before, you know, I can check as we talk, but it's a, you know, it's a lot and then a lot from from from the FCN Academy as well. So, you know, we're super proud of that. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirty, fourteen of us squad have come through the two academies. Which is cool, you know, when you know a player's journey from eleven, it means more. And do you think wider football is looking at right to dream and learning lessons from right to dream and what you've done at nausea and as well. Yeah, yeah, you know, we see yeah. And that's actually part of our brand strategy is we want to be replicated. Because that's about opportunity creation. So, you know, firstly on the academy level in Africa, my inbox is just jammed full of people who send me really nice emails about inspiration right to dream provides and the fact that they're trying to replicate the model and we try to help with some, but we'd actually like to get that better structure to share all of our knowledge and learning in that regard. It's one of the many sort of projects in the parking lot of things to do one day. And then if you look at, you know, if you look at Danish football, you can see. see the average age has gone down and that we've had a big impacts on that. You know, we've increased player sales in FCN has increased 340% from this six years before to the six years after, but also, you know, in other kind of developmental leagues, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, player sales has increased about 80% over that period, but in Denmark, it's increased 190%. So you can see that other clubs are kind of looking at some of the things that we do and there's some brilliant competition. You know, FC Copenhagen's average age has dropped significantly. They use a lot of academy players in their team as well. I'm not saying that's just about them copying us, but maybe it is a little bit. And, you know, and Midgilland were kind of already, already at it and also did projects in Ghana and Nigeria. They don't do anything in Ghana anymore. So there's, you know, Danes have famed for their innovation anyway and, you know, and a lot of our innovation in Denmark is not driven from me. It's driven from, you know, Danes who kind of took the core idea and took it on and evolved it and developed it. So, so I think there's a lot of people looking to learn from and take part of our model. And, you know, six years ago when I would go around talking about Nordicland, you know, some people remembered that they played in the Champions League in 2012, which was a phenomenal achievement. But now with what we're doing, you don't have to introduce the project to anyone, which is his massive credit to everyone who's made that happen at the club. Do you think English teams are learning from what you do as well? Yeah, yeah, for sure. In all the other big leagues, when we talk to clubs, I hear them saying, you know, we can do more of what you do. But I hear a lot of English clubs saying, "Hey, that wouldn't work here." And, and I've got no idea why, because I think it's pretty clear that England's got the most talent young players of any country in the world at the moment. And they're obviously doing a fairly good job to get them through, which reflects it in national team performances, but I'm sure they could do more. So I think a lot of English football is caught in a, you know, in a, in a stereotype of what is and isn't possible, and that then really needs to change a lot of the language and thinking around the game. But then you've obviously got, you know, guys like Matthew Benham and Tony Bloom, who we take huge inspiration from as well, and some of the best innovation in, in world football is also happening within the Premier League. So, so, so it's like any league, you know, different clubs, different stories, different levels of courage and innovation. We have Simone Lewis as our head of culture, who, who drove a lot of, a lot of the coach education, you know, across the Premier League and she talks to me in detail about what was achieved with the Triple P and, and there's certainly like loads of loads of things that have been done extremely well. And, and that's reflected in, you know, the, the increased quality of the Premier League. You know, I remember a few years ago, if you did have any spare time, if there was a top six game on, you'd be excited about it. But at bottom six game, you didn't really want to watch it, but now, you know, you can put a game on like, you know, leads against, so I'm to not something. And you know that you're going to see the best young players in the world playing in that game. And, and so the leagues pushed on a lot. And, and there's tons to learn from it for sure. And I know you've talked before about maybe opening an English academy. So, are you still thinking of doing that? We're all focused on America at the moment. But, you know, we get, we get offers and approach from all over the world all the time. And, because, because I think that sort of holistic model appeals and maybe some people see us as maybe the part of the solution for the way forward for the academy game, which is, you know, we're super proud of. And, and yeah, you know, I don't rule anything out like we're called right to dream. So, you've got to keep it going to live. And just the last one, what are your KPIs as a group that you've viewed sort of summarised, though? So, so our first is, is our social impact. And, you know, that, that is, that's in the space of the, the holistic impact that we have on each of our kids' lives. And then that extends more broadly into the impact that they and we have on the communities that we operate in. The second is, is the growth of our brand equity. And, you know, that's in, in relation to inspire people as I touched on to kind of move in our direction in, in making their own dreams come true or creating opportunities for others who might be overlooked. But that's also, you know, our brand equity is in relation to the young players want to come to us rather than other clubs. And we're starting to see like, you know, Andreas Scheller up was a great case recently went to Benfica, but he chose us over Liverpool and Iax and some other clubs. And so, and that's happening a little bit more. So, where's our brand equity at in relation to kids wanting to to join? And then also our brand equity in terms of how we can engage with commercial parts partners to take us forward. Our third is in relation to football performance and, you know, that's the one that's probably easiest to develop the KPIs, the league table is where you start, but, but, you know, we look at, you know, what's the, what's the quality of the pipeline of players in our system? What's the success of our graduates when they leave? You know, what's the value of our total global solidarity? What's the value of our retained percentages, you know, around the world? We had seven players playing at the World Cup. This, you know, this last World Cup, which is a KPI within football performance. So quite a broad set of KPI's within football performance. And then the last is financial sustainability. And, you know, we were not for dividend organization, so everything goes back in. But, you know, when we're not in growth phases, we obviously don't want to be making capital calls to our, to our, to our owners and investors. So, you know, we haven't quite got there yet, but we're, you know, we're moving in the right direction with that. And we're growing so much at the moment that a lot of our investment is in growth. So those are the four, those are the four metrics that, that we assess ourselves on. Well, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today. Now you're welcome. It's great to talk. Thank you for listening to the Turning Ground Guru podcast in association with Huddle. We'll be back next month with another episode. In the meantime, you can follow our latest updates on the website and on Twitter @ground_guru.