Essien is not the only face familiar to Premier League fans who has worked under the Right to Dream umbrella.
Djimi Traore, a Champions League winner with Liverpool in 2005, trained at the academy base in Ghana before taking charge of AS Monaco’s youth team this year. Coach development is second in the hierarchy of priorities within the multi-club academy set-up.
“We’re happy when the coaches leave us,” says Right to Dream technical director Flemming Pedersen, who was previously manager of Brentford’s B team.
“The same goes for our players. So we hope that our best coaches will one day return home.
“I was away for a year and a half in Brentford. You always learn something new when you get to know a new culture. That’s important for us.
“We will be stronger if some of our coaches go to big clubs in other countries. Our philosophy is: if we help each other, we will recover a lot of good things.
“For us, success is the integration of the players from our academies. If we do not achieve this, we will never obtain results.
“We are measuring the development of our playing style. That will give us better results. We are also measuring our coaches and how we educate them.”
For now, however, Essien has no plans to flee Nordsjaelland in search of managerial opportunities.
“I’m not thinking about being a head coach. Not yet,” he says.
“But when I get there, I’ll develop my playing style around the FCN model of what we’re doing here. I’ve got a few more years left. Let’s see. Maybe I’ll get there.
“When I was playing, I never thought I would embark on this journey. But as I came to the end of my career, one day I thought, ‘I’ve played football my whole life and I think that’s what I do best. I should start doing something on my own. to maintain my routine.
“I also wanted to get ideas and strategies on how to coach, learn how to coach. That’s how it all came about.”
“And also because I love the game. I will always be in and around the game.
“I try to do the best I can to help the young people coming up so they can do something with their careers.
“This generation can be quite difficult sometimes. Sometimes they think they know the world, but in reality they don’t know anything.
“Having me around, it’s easy for them to come and ask me some questions and I give them some guidelines and some advice.”
However much he may protest, Essien appears to be preparing for an opportunity to take over as manager. Just as he once mastered the art of the midfield game, he is now loading up on ideas on how to be an excellent coach.
“I just finished a football management course,” he says. “It’s given me some ideas about how football clubs are run, the organization and all that.
“I’m just gathering some knowledge about the game, because football goes beyond the field.”
