What is different about this academy?

In addition to football training, players involved at the Atrium will receive private schooling provided on-site by LAED EDUCON, who will provide each student athlete with individual student academic support, specialist subject educators, independent learning and academic flexibility.

“They are gonna be schooling at the academy, so there’ll be full-time schooling with top educators because we believe that education must be on par with the football and that’s aiming high because you know that the standard at Stars of Africa is very high. So, if we want the education to be as high as that, we have to get the best person. But we’ve got a woman who is very passionate. Already, she has educated s number of boys at Stars (of Africa) who couldn’t go to other schools because of learning reasons. She’s already matriculated a number of them, and now she’s gonna be here as a fulltime educator. We’ve built a big, big classroom. It’s still very rough and hopefully by the end of November, this place will be ready to walk in.

“So, we will try to educate players. Some of them may not become footballers. They may become journalists, coaches or whatever else. But this is a good grounding for them. So, when you send your child here, you are getting a fantastic education. Academical and football education, but also discipline, because that’s the key factor. This place will be so well-managed that kids will eat, drink, sleep football. On weekends, maybe parents take them, those that are living close by will go home and come back. It will be like a rugby school, where when a youngster sees you, they look you straight in the eye and take off their hat before greeting you,” Khan shared.

Why was it established?

Khan, who has placed a number of players in some of Europe’s top leagues as in the case of Rantie, who spent time in the English Premiership with Bournemouth, says he has identified a physical inferiority posed by our players against their European and South American counterparts, an area his academy is desperate to rectify.

“If you look at the normal set-up in development, most kids go to normal schools. They’ll come back in the evening and in the afternoons they go to training for an hour-and-a-half and they go home. That’s not sufficient. When I studied it in Brazil, I estimated 20 hours of training per youth player per week, not per month. That means four hours a day. So, what we are doing is we are basing it on that Brazilian model where we are gonna have the kids’ first training from 05h00 to about 06h30 because it’s our school. When they come back from training in the morning, they have a nice breakfast, go to school until 13h00, go for lunch and the second, afternoon session comes in.

“This is now where we work on the tactical and technical side because in the morning, it is purely physical, building them up. That is a huge area of playing the game and we have realised how poor we are physically compared to our counterparts in Europe and elsewhere in South America where I studied. There’s no Brazilian player who, when he joins a club in England, has to wait. Physically, mentally and technically he is ready.

Lessons borrowed from Brazil

One major upgrade to the new-look academy is the elite facilities which include 24hour access control, a gym, internet access, shower/icing facility, study rooms, player lounges, game room with table tennis, PlayStation and foosball. These facilities will enable players to receive holistic training and the necessary respite both on and off the field.

This is an area identified by Khan during his studies in the land of the Samba.

“Once the boys finish the afternoon session, they come back to the academy because we’ve got beautiful fields across from where we are. They then have supper, have a study period and then they come for an hour’s video analysis. This is where we discuss modern trends, tactical awareness. Sometimes they say a picture is worth a thousand words. But the video is probably 100 000 words. So, they will be watching videos on motivation, on tactics, on all the different aspects of the modern game.”