Right to Dream Academy owner, Tom Vernon has revealed how he ended up working for English giants Manchester United as a scout and how it affected the building of his Academy in Ghana.
Right to Dream Academy has developed and churned out several talents in the country including the likes of Godsway Donyoh and David Accam.
Most of their graduates have gone on to become professional footballers with others gaining scholarships to study abroad, in the U.S.A and the United Kingdom.
The man behind the success of Right to Dream Academy disclosed how the journey all started and how he even landed a scouting job with Manchester United.
"So I did a couple of coaching jobs that went pretty well, and I was doing the Academy on a non residential bases because that's where my heart was so I was trying to figure out how to pay the bills and get the Academy off the ground and there was a scout from Manchester United called Frank Lord who lived in South Africa, went to a couple of major tournament but didn't do too much because there was not too much of focus from Man United on Africa and I was at a tournament with him in the Gambia and I just went to these things to try build a bit of networks," he told Thisfootballlife.com.
"At the tournament in Gambia, there was this kid in Burkina Faso that I told Frank of and he told me that was his kid but Frank didn't want to travel to Burkina Faso to see the boy so he asked me to go check him out,"
"I went to Burkina Faso to meet this kid, Alain Traore, who had a good career and whose brother is Betrand Traore and I asked (Alain), do you want to go to Man United for a trail, he said yes.
"I called Frank's house and his wife picked up and told me Frank has died of heart attack so after the funeral and all I called Manchester United and told them Frank was working on this kid and it will be a shame if he did not get the opportunity,"
"Les Reed was the Academy director said bring in him, I'd like to look at him and I manage to get one of my right to dream academy guys in and we took Alain in, he did good but had other offers and Royal Antwerp who were United's partners then had issues with work permit and so he signed for Auxerre and at the end of the trip, Les told me they'd love to some one in Africa to scout for them and I met Sir Alex and I took the job,"
"It was great. United certainly didn't have full focus on Africa but they allow me to bring a couple of my Right to Dream Academy guys to use their facilities and so much of what I learn was from the values I had from the leadership of United's academy."
By Lukman Evergreen Mumin