“They Key To Being A Good Footballer Is Playing In The Future”
- Crystal Palace U18 Football Coach
It all started with a young kid wanting to have fun, playing football with his mates at church. To being scouted to join a 5-aside football team called Balham SDA. After a year playing he became captain and managed to help win many tournaments across the city of London with majority of those wins coming from against teams 2x his age.
He was then scouted by Carshalton Athletics U14 where he had a taste of his first 11v11 matches. He was then quickly scouted by Charlton Athletic U16, where a couple of his friends where playing already so the move was a no brainer for him.
Signing for Charlton was the first time reality kicked in - he wasn’t the best player about and he couldn’t get enough game time no matter how hard he pushed during training, day in and day out. While still playing for his 5-aside team he was scouted by a Crystal Palace U18 coach.
He signed for Crystal Palace and spent almost 36 months playing some of the best football and gained the best advice and coaching from the academy staff. He managed to implement what he learnt there into his daily life, however a professional contract was not an option so he decided to turn to the US to continue his education and playing.
He signed for a school in California and spent a couple years honing his skills and picking up the love of talent ID, more specifically scouting and player development. In California is where he met his co-academy owner. They had the same ideology for player develop and amazingly enough both originally came from London, UK.
They both came back to the U.K after a few years in the states winning their conference and playing at a top tier level to open their football development agency - giving players the chance to develop on their current skill set, recover from injuries and progress up the football ladder. A year later and many conversations with local universities and charities ATG Sports FC academy was created to facilitate the next big stars in football.