How taking youth development into the boardroom made Danes great again

Still, they are, due to the abundance of gifted footballers their manager has at his disposal, always considered dark horses who are capable of upsetting more feted rivals and progressing far into the competition.

The country which failed to qualify for either Brazil 2014 or Euro 2016 and which plummeted to 51st place, an all-time low, in the FIFA World Rankings in 2017, has enjoyed a resurgence in fortunes the past seven years.

So how have Denmark, who have a population of just under six million, gone from being a national embarrassment to a major force in the global game during that time?

And what can Scotland learn from the experiences of a team which was only denied a place in the Euro 2020 final by a bad refereeing decision in their semi-final against hosts England at Wembley?

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Ole Bjur, the former Brondby and Denmark midfielder who is now sports director with the Danish League, has witnessed how moving youth development from the training pitch into the boardroom has produced a new generation of exceptional young players and been responsible for the transformation.

 “We need to go back to 2015 when the sports directors and the CEOs from the Danish clubs decided, together with Danish League, to start up a collaboration with a Belgian company called Double Pass,” said Bjur.

“At that time, Double Pass were working with Belgian and German football, with all the clubs there, and were enjoying great results. They are among the best in the world to work with on a consultancy level. 

(Image: PA Wire) “So we said, ‘Let's get them to come and have a look at the Danish clubs and present a new way to look at talent development. That was a real game changer for us in Denmark.

“Double Pass came with new knowledge, with a whole new language. They told clubs, ‘Talent development is not just about the single player out on the pitch, it is a whole lot more. It's actually very much about strategy at board level, at CEO level’.

“They told us, ‘It's very much about structures in your organization. How do you work together at different levels? How do first team coaches work together with the academy director? How does the sports director work together with the academy? How do you set up structures to secure a very close collaboration between these different levels?’

“It's all about a lot of stuff other than just about what's going on down on the pitch. That was their feedback. As I say, it was a complete game changer for us. All of a sudden, we saw the talent development from an entirely new perspective.

“They audited all our best clubs, 15 clubs at the first cut and then 14 clubs after that. So overall it was 29 clubs. They all got a very detailed feedback and we got a big report. That gave us a whole lot of things to work on, both centrally and out at the clubs.

“Centrally, the Danish League started working very closely together with the Danish FA. We pooled resources and the knowledge and the competences in the two organisations.

“The clubs became aware what they needed to do to improve? At that time, there was a really fantastic energy in many of our clubs. They said, ‘Okay, we want to improve, we believe in working with our own players’.”

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Bjur continued: “But we also did two things after that. We introduced a youth licence system which was very much built upon the talent model from Double Pass. If a club wanted to have a licence, there were very clear demands. To have a certain amount of stars, you need to have a certain amount of coaches and a certain amount of staff who had been educated at a certain level.

“We needed to see things. What is your philosophy? What is your curriculum? How do you work with the players and with the coaches? How is your daily life? How is your structure? We said, ‘You need to do this if you want to be in the system’.

“But if they met those demands then they would be financially supported and Double Pass would come out and help them regularly. They started to provide individual support and consultation to the clubs. That was partially funded centrally. That gave many of our clubs a fantastic opportunity to develop.

“They had continual dialogue with Double Pass. They told them, ‘Okay, now you're looking quite good in these areas, but these areas really need to improve’. They told them how to be better at their strategy

“They didn't have the competences to drive a large strategy process involving the board, the CEO, the sports director all the way down in the club. But Double Pass knew how to do that. They came out and helped them to build their strategy.

(Image: Newsquest Design) “They told us how to do so many things. How do we incorporate our sports science sector into our practices? How do we work with psychologists to improve the mentality of players? How do we work with the human resource department? How do we recruit good people? There were all kinds of things.

“It's not like they came out once and had a look at a club. It was a continual thing that we were funding, constant dialogue and assessment. They came out for two or three days at the start of the season, again in autumn and again in the spring. We co-financed it.

“It got to a stage where clubs had grown bigger and become more competent and were able to do a lot more on their own. Our top 20 academies are developing continuously, bringing in more people with higher competence and education levels. Now it's more organic growth.

“That lifted our clubs during the following years in a dramatic way. There was explosive development at many clubs. It was kind of a case of building an engine which was incredibly strong. That's the most important part of the story.”

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The SFA published the “transition phase” paper which was co-authored by Andy Gould, their chief football officer, and Chris Docherty, their head of elite men’s strategy, back in May and the findings are now being considered by a working party comprising members of the SFA professional game board and the SPFL competitions working group

However, the governing body are hopeful the recommendations contained within it will enable more promising youngsters to make the difficult step up from the age group sides into the first team and establish themselves in the professional game. Bjur feels that concentrating on that vital process has been important in Denmark.

“We introduced what we call the transition coach,” he said. “We saw that we had, despite the changes we made, the same problem as 10 years before when young players entered first team squads.

“You always have one or two who are strong enough to then make it on their own. But you also have players who are 24th or 25th in the squad who have been used to being first choice. That’s very difficult for them.

“The first team coach doesn't really have time to give them any attention so we introduced a transition coach who is part of both the academy and the first team. Their role is to help these young transition players keep developing. They know what is going on.

“They can tell a young player he isn’t playing because the first team coach believes that he still needs to improve on this and this. They look at video clips together. They make sure they get game time, if not in the first team then in reserve games or other kinds of games. We needed to focus more on these players. So the introduction of the transition coach was extremely important.

“We also said, ‘If you want to be a three, four or five star club in the licensing system, you need to have a very strong strategy on your youth, on your talent development, but also on your transition. So how do you want to work strategically to secure a strong transition?’ We worked a lot on setting up committees with representatives from both the academy and the first team . They discuss the young players.

“They will say, ‘The academy have a 17-year-old guy here who plays in this position and is really developing and looking good and has a huge potential. So maybe he's ready to take part in a training session with the first team. What do you think? How do we see this?’

“You start planning from when they are 15, 16 or 17. You start the transition phase and build them into the first team. You slowly feed them in there and have the transition coach with them all the way to make sure that they feel comfortable in this development phase.”

(Image: PA Wire) Danish football has started the see the fruits of their labour in recent years – and Bjur predicted that many more outstanding players are emerging from the youth ranks who are capable of representing the national team with distinction as well as netting the clubs which invested in their development huge profits in the transfer market.

“The latest guy to emerge is Albert Grønbaek,” he said. “He came through at AGF, then he went to Bodo/Glimt in Norway and now he's playing in Ligue 1 in France with Rennes.

“He made his Denmark debut against Switzerland in the Nations League last month, played a tremendous game and was named Man of the Match. He then scored a great goal against Serbia.

“He is just 23, but he's a top player. I know him very well. It's been so nice to see how he just keeps growing. Rennes bought him for €15m. So that shows you also have the financial benefits of youth development. There's a lot of money in this potentially.

“We have so many players who have made that journey. And new ones are coming up all the time. There is a striker called Conrod Harder who is now playing with Sporting Lisbon in Portugal after moving from Nordsjaelland for €20m this year.

“In Danish football at the moment, the transfers of young players are at a crazy level. A lot of time and investment goes into these young players. But if a club is successful at it they will recoup that money in transfer fees. It makes financial sense as well, it really does. Just one player, you need just one player. You can run an academy for a long time on €20m. 

“It's become a very strong part of the business model. They have a very strong strategic focus on that. Talent development is a big part of board meetings. It wasn't 10 years ago. Nobody discussed if before, they didn't care. Now, it's probably the most important thing for many boards.”