FC Nordsjælland are earning the Right to Dream
The Danish champions were taken over by Tom Vernon in 2015, becoming part of the Right to Dream entity which is opening academies around the world, now it's about what's next...
“When we won the league three months ago, we thought we’d just be happy to be in the Champions League,” says Jessica Davis, sporting director of Danish side FC Nordsjælland.
“Now it’s like ‘nope, not enough!’ It’s incredible how quick the mindset shifts. We want to make an impact, we want to progress. It’s never ending.”
USA-born Davis, a former player of FC Nordsjælland’s women’s team, is speaking about the club’s recent defeat in the opening round of Champions League qualifiers to Portuguese champions – and last season’s quarter-finalists – Benfica.
For the Danish side based in Farum, it was always going to be a tough ask. Heading into their first European campaign off the back of a first domestic title, the women’s branch of the club is a mere seven years old, but the story goes way deeper.
In 2015, the club was purchased by Tom Vernon, the founder of Ghana-based football academy, Right to Dream, whose aim is to develop the best young players in all corners of the globe, and in the subsequent years has set up academies or purchased teams in Egypt and the USA, as well as FC Nordsjælland.
Vernon, a former scout for Manchester United, has enjoyed great success with the first academy he set up in Ghana, and has seen players skip between clubs and academies, as well as going onto represent some of the world’s top clubs.
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It means while FC Nordsjælland have quickly risen to the top and are already champions of Denmark, they are doing it with a squad based predominantly around academy players, such as Princess Marfo who arrived at the club from the Right to Dream academy in Ghana, and has now secured a move to NWSL expansion side Bay FC.
“This is my fifth season with the club, my second as sporting director,” says Davis, who previously played in Australia and Sweden, among other nations.
“Things have just changed so much. I was at training this morning watching all the staff and thinking back to when I got here and we had one full-time member of staff. The way we’ve progressed is incredible. Being in the Champions League, it’s easy to forget where we came from, but because I saw the growing pains I can appreciate the position we’ve come from and where we are now.”
When Davis arrived as a player in August 2020, the team had just finished third in its first season in the top division after earning promotion at the first time of asking, and the journey since has been about both adapting to the Right to Dream model while trying to create success on the pitch at the stadium now named after Right to Dream.
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