AC Football Center

The Complete Football Academy Coordination Programme

How to run an academy that produces players who make their own decisions, with a methodology that holds no matter how often coaches and boards change. Built from inside Lezama, Athletic Club’s academy, and from real work in Mallorca, Ecuador, Belgium and the Iraq national team.

Course facts

  • Intermediate
  • 11 weeks
  • 8 units
  • Arabic
  • Certificate of completion

Price on this page: 139.60 EUR (instead of 349.00 EUR)

Enrol in the course

  • A methodology that restarts from zero with every new coach
  • Player files scattered across personal phones, lost when their owners leave
  • Release decisions nobody can defend in front of parents
  • Coaches who dictate, producing players who execute but never decide
  • Obsession with under-age results, and pressure from parents and agents
  • Random scouting unrelated to the club’s identity or budget
  • A philosophy that puts the player at the centre
  • A system to run and audit a network of clubs
  • Tools to evaluate players and coaches
  • A scouting and recruitment methodology
  • A database you build yourself, no programmer needed
  • A full case study of rebuilding a struggling academy

The goal: To leave able to design and run a complete academy system — from philosophy and identity, to coach development and player evaluation, to scouting and data — that produces independent players and stays stable whatever the results or the board.

Real experiences you learn from

Athletic Club — Lezama

A club that relies on players from one small region and still competes at the elite level. The answer: “Lezama is the whole region”, through a network of 161 partner clubs and psychological, evaluation and management tools from the inside.

RCD Mallorca

Rebuilding an academy after bankruptcy, a string of owners and authoritarian management, arriving at horizontal leadership and coaches who write the methodology themselves.

Independiente del Valle

Owning Ecuador’s talent map through 150 schools and centres, and moving from a “comfort culture” to a culture of merit.

Aspire and KAS Eupen

A project that tested half a million children in seven African countries, and a promotion-winning squad built in a town of 18,000 with only two scouts.

Iraq national team

Working inside a different organisational culture: early logistics planning, blending Europe-based professionals with local players, and carrying a methodology across national teams.

The experts

  • Arkaitz Mota — Head of Scouting — Independiente del Valle. Head of Scouting at Independiente del Valle, leading talent identification for the Ecuadorian club.
  • Gorka Garai — Sporting Development — Athletic Club. Sporting development specialist within Athletic Club's youth academy structure.
  • Alejandro Varela — Assistant Coach — Iraq National Team. Assistant coach with the Iraq national football team, with international experience in player development.
  • Miquel Toni — Director of Youth Football — RCD Mallorca. Director of Youth Football at RCD Mallorca, overseeing the club's academy pathway.
  • Roberto Robles — Head Coach — Debrecen. Head coach at Debreceni VSC, the Hungarian top-flight club.
  • Sergio Navarro — Assistant Coach — Debrecen. Assistant coach at Debreceni VSC.
  • Lander Hernández — Head of Youth Development — Athletic Club. Head of the Youth Development Department at Athletic Club, a key figure in the club's Cantera philosophy.
  • Ibon Landa — Technology Development — Athletic Club. Leads Technology Development at Athletic Club, driving data and digital transformation initiatives across the academy.

The course, unit by unit

Unit 1: Player-centred coaching and developing autonomy

From inside Lezama — Roberto Robles and coach Mikel Badiola

How a coach moves from giving instructions to being an “architect of environments” where the player owns the decision, and the psychological, organisational and digital tools that make it work day to day.

What you will learn

  • The psychological map built in one-to-one sessions at the start of the season on three pillars — the player’s skills, the situations that worry them, and their own picture of the game — then turned into an individual season goal.
  • The “Garatus” emotional-intelligence programme: handling fear of injury and release, the weight of representing the club, and protection from early stardom and social-media pressure.
  • Co-design: involving players in the match plan and in designing drills, and turning their natural talk on the bus and in the dressing room into a planned part of the session.
  • A checklist for a good drill: does it give freedom to decide? Is there uncertainty? Does it keep the game’s internal logic? Did a player propose the challenge?
  • A single player file combining notes from the coach, doctor and fitness coach, so a new coach never starts from zero when a player moves up an age group.
  • Organising the training week between individual work and coordination across coaches, and redefining success: graduates who reach the first team, not youth trophies.

Afterwards you can

  • Build an individual goal for each player, agreed with them.
  • Design drills that hand the decision to the player and involve them in building it.
  • Set real success indicators for the player, the coach and the club.

Hands-on task: Set an individual goal from a psychological map, organise a training week, and measure academy success without results — using examples from your own work.

Unit 2: Managing and developing academy systems

Lander Hernández — Head of Youth Academy Development, Athletic Club

How a club turns a hard constraint — a small region with few births — into an “extended academy” run through audits, tiering, project management and coach development.

What you will learn

  • The four strands of work with partner clubs: audit, then advice and projects, then technical work on the pitch, then education.
  • An annual audit that scores each club on people, facilities, digital resources and organisational structure — with weighting that does not punish a club for what is beyond its control.
  • Three-tier classification and what the coordinator watches: the player at elite clubs, the coach at mid-tier clubs, the session at grassroots clubs. “Whoever holds on to everything loses everything.”
  • OKRs on youth pitches: an ambitious objective, measurable key results with an owner for each, a spider chart for tracking, quarterly reviews, and a “final warning” for those who do not commit.
  • Influence, not authority: the traits of the “chameleon coordinator” who adapts to each club’s identity, and diagnosing common coordination faults.
  • Coach development: external and internal courses, a personal development plan for every coach, the 15/15 programme — 15 coaches spend 15 days inside the academy, then two years of mentoring — and how to handle a coach who refuses to develop.

Afterwards you can

  • Design an audit and tiering system for a network of clubs or branches.
  • Turn weaknesses into projects with owners and follow-up.
  • Build a coach development path from identification to mentoring.

Hands-on task: Assess two audit areas, write an objective with two key results, and draft a development plan for a coach.

Unit 3: Player-centred coaching and evaluation tools

Roberto Robles and coach Mikel Badiola

“The player is the centre, not the plan”: the team is built from understanding each player as a project of their own, and evaluation is a compass for growth, not a pass-or-fail verdict.

What you will learn

  • The eight teaching principles, including challenging the comfort zone, non-linear growth, varied experiences, critical awareness, and an ecological approach that links training with family and school.
  • Horizontal work between coaches instead of “the head coach decides, the assistant executes”, and building methodology bottom-up — with a candid account from a coach who lived the shock of that change.
  • The individual-goal cycle across a season: from “I want to be a better defender” to a measurable goal such as “controlling receiving distance”, with a real player who moved to a harder goal after one month.
  • Linking individual and team through “playing intentions”, so the full-back’s goal serves the centre-back’s.
  • Three adaptable evaluation tools: rating the coach’s verbal and non-verbal interventions, a checklist for the staff group’s interventions, and a drill log with its structural and tactical elements.
  • More tools: confronting the “feeling versus reality gap” with video, coaches recording themselves, reflective diaries filled in by players, peer evaluation, and simplified evaluation for 5–6 year olds.
  • Player autonomy on training camps: groups for nutrition, match plans and organisation, each with a leader, a player ready for a step forward, and a player who needs help.

Afterwards you can

  • Turn general aims into measurable individual goals linked to the team.
  • Evaluate the quality of your interventions and drills with structured tools.
  • Give players real responsibilities on and off the pitch.

Hands-on task: Write a measurable goal, use two of the evaluation tools, and simplify evaluation for the youngest groups.

Unit 4: The philosophy of managing and forming players

Alejandro Varela — Assistant Coach, Iraq national team, and former academy director

A unit written for the academy director: planned adaptation instead of improvisation, building identity and belonging, and protecting development from the results trap and parental pressure.

What you will learn

  • “Adapt, don’t improvise”: backup plans ready for rain, missing players and pitch changes, and the academy director as the link between age groups and sporting management.
  • A five-element leadership model — communication, coordination, integration, trust and commitment — with the “leadership pyramid”.
  • Defining club identity before methodology: a seller of talent, a buyer, or a community club? And how to manage the crisis of a youth player about to leave.
  • The problem with 20–0 wins at grassroots age, why they cause a “reality shock” later, and the fix of rotating positions and tough contexts — with attention to the relative age effect, studied in an analysis of more than 2.7 million players.
  • Managing parents and agents: set meeting times, no contact during training, separating the “school” for fun from the “registered team” for competition, and a player code of conduct.
  • Cultural adaptation from the Iraq national team: logistics planned months ahead, inspecting accommodation early, and blending Europe-based professionals with local players as one family.

Afterwards you can

  • Run an academy with backup plans and disciplined communication with parents and agents.
  • Turn the identity of the club and city into daily behaviour and belonging indicators.
  • Protect the methodology from pressure for instant results.

Hands-on task: Organise communication with parents, set an indicator that measures belonging, and analyse the risks of copying professional drills with young players.

Unit 5: Scouting strategies and cultural adaptation

Arkaitz Oyarzabal — experience at Barcelona, Real Madrid, Aspire, Eupen and Independiente del Valle

Finding talent across environments and cultures, and how a successful scout or director starts by understanding the person and the context, respecting a club’s identity before changing anything.

What you will learn

  • The five pillars of any football project — recruitment, development, competitiveness, education and promotion to the first team — and why recruitment matters most.
  • The three scouting circles: internal (current and loaned players), then the domestic market, then international — and the “new club protocol”: respect the identity, observe quietly, listen, then change gradually.
  • The Eupen case study: a squad built from five talent sources, two player lists (a promotion plan and a survival plan), and three neighbouring leagues covered by two scouts.
  • The Football Dreams project and the “pre-academy” system for ages 11–12.
  • A culture of merit: tying player privileges to school reports, behaviour in residence, commitment in training and performance in competition.
  • Field scout tools: the “possible player” versus the “impossible player”, a shared football language across scouts through the club’s game model, and a backup database for every position in case the coach changes.
  • Cultural intelligence: managing teams of many languages and faiths, working in poor environments, and taking girls’ circumstances into account in women’s football.

Afterwards you can

  • Design a staged scouting plan that fits your club’s budget.
  • Lead change at a new club without clashing with its identity.
  • Assess a player in their human context and mental strength.

Hands-on task: Design a recruitment strategy on a limited budget, lead the shift to a culture of merit, and work through the ethics of acceptance and rejection decisions.

Unit 6: Digital transformation and data management

Ibon Barandiaran — Athletic Club

A hands-on, step-by-step build of a complete academy information system in Airtable without writing any code: one source of data, and a view of its own for every user.

What you will learn

  • Why Excel and email cannot manage a club’s knowledge, and how Airtable is structured: base, then table, then view.
  • Building the players table with controlled fields and closed answers that standardise position and team names across the club.
  • Many views of one table: a view per coach that hides sensitive data, photo cards, a training calendar, and forms sent to families on WhatsApp.
  • A complete technical evaluation system: two reviews in December and May, a decision (continue, undecided, release), technical, tactical and physical ratings, and items specific to each position.
  • Formulas and grouping: averages that reduce personal bias, a competition table with minutes and goals, and grouping players by decision or share of minutes.
  • Linked tables: one digital ID per player that updates automatically across evaluation and medical records, a video library, a player card exported to PDF, and dashboards for management.
  • A realistic tool decision: when a flexible low-cost tool is enough, and when a club needs a dedicated platform or links to external data providers.

Afterwards you can

  • Build a central database for your academy yourself, without a programmer.
  • Share information so each person sees only what concerns them.
  • Document continue and release decisions with numbers you can defend.

Hands-on task: Build a master database that prevents conflicting names, and answer a parent’s complaint using the evaluations view.

Unit 7: Talent recruitment and managing player development

From the technical secretariat of Athletic Club’s sporting development department

Lezama’s complete recruitment system: reading the club’s identity, then scouting, then position profiles and succession lines, then negotiation, through to an individual development plan for every player.

What you will learn

  • Reading the context before any signing: what fans expect and the style they want to see, the social environment, and purchasing power.
  • Strategic choices: aggressive recruitment versus internal development, and whether the budget goes to scouting or to coaches and methodology.
  • Assessing potential, not just performance, and guarding against overvaluing early developers.
  • Position profiles and succession lines: sub-profiles within each position, spotting gaps two to four seasons before they open, and the courage to move a player’s position instead of signing someone.
  • Scouting method and match reports: watching a player in different contexts, two ratings (current and potential) with colour coding, several scouts per player — and data tools that support the expert eye rather than replace it.
  • Decision and negotiation: physical tests on arrival, judging early and late maturation, and negotiating by showing how well the club knows the player and presenting his development plan to the family instead of a financial lure.
  • A complete individual plan across physical, mental and football performance, with goal cards and regular feedback, and loans managed as part of the player’s project.

Afterwards you can

  • Write a recruitment policy that fits your club’s identity and market.
  • Prepare succession lines that anticipate first-team needs several seasons ahead.
  • Negotiate with a young player and his family in a way that builds trust.

Hands-on task: Decide on signing a player whose potential exceeds his current performance, and write a short individual development plan.

Unit 8: Rebuilding academy systems and holistic player development

Miquel Toni Gilabert — Academy Director, RCD Mallorca

A detailed case study of rebuilding the academy of a club emerging from financial and management crisis into a stable institution built on horizontal leadership and forming the person before the athlete — strengths and weaknesses included.

What you will learn

  • Diagnosing reality before changing it, and setting goals independent of first-team results and its coach: staying in the first team, not just appearing, and a player able to adapt if sold or loaned.
  • Managing staff: tasks assigned by competence, not job title, two equal coaches on youth teams, and an open mindset valued over a CV full of trophies.
  • Recruitment with ethical limits: local talent first, not separating a child from the family too early, and host families instead of boarding.
  • Answers to weak local competition: making daily training “the real match”, and training games that start from a losing score.
  • The four-area “roadmap”: values (one value the coach works on each week), integrated education, play, and belonging.
  • Training by contexts instead of a closed match plan, and communication that supports player autonomy.
  • Individual goals and ongoing learning: a mentor for every player, coaches visiting each other, a safeguarding protocol for minors, and school as plan A, not plan B.

Afterwards you can

  • Diagnose a struggling academy and set goals to rebuild it as an institution.
  • Write a roadmap for values, play and education that everyone follows.
  • Protect your methodology from changing with every new board.

Hands-on task: Handle a talented player who refuses defensive duties without being authoritarian, and make sure knowledge is passed on when a staff member leaves.

What you walk away with

  • Design a complete academy system that starts from club identity and ends with a development plan for every player.
  • Move coaches from dictating to building environments that produce players who decide for themselves.
  • Run a network of clubs or branches with audits, tiering, and projects that have owners and follow-up.
  • Evaluate players, coaches and drills with structured tools instead of impressions.
  • Build a scouting and recruitment policy that fits your budget and market, with succession lines for several seasons.
  • Create a central academy database yourself, and document decisions with numbers you can defend.
  • Protect the methodology from results pressure, parents, and change with every new board.
  • Lead a staff team in a cultural and organisational setting different from your own.

Who this course is for

  • Academy directors and heads of youth football
  • Methodology directors and technical coordinators
  • Sporting directors
  • Scouts and recruitment leads
  • Academy coaches aiming for a leadership role

Frequently asked questions

Who is this course for?

Academy directors and heads of youth football, Methodology directors and technical coordinators, Sporting directors, Scouts and recruitment leads, Academy coaches aiming for a leadership role

How long does the course take?

The suggested 11 weeks is based on the actual pace of people who completed the course, and varies with the time you have.

What language is the course taught in?

The course is taught fully in Arabic.

How does the learning work?

Each unit has recorded lectures, detailed readings, and written case studies where you take the role of coach, coordinator, director or scout and answer with examples from your own reality. You learn at your own pace, and the course ends with a final exam.

Do I get a certificate?

When you pass the final exam you receive a certificate of completion you can download and share with employers.

Level before enrolling?

Intermediate. The course does not teach coaching basics, and asks you to apply what you learn to examples from your own work.

What you should know before enrolling?

The language of coaching and age groups (the session, game model, staff roles, video analysis). Basic spreadsheet familiarity is enough. No management or programming background needed; OKRs and Airtable are explained from the start.

Prerequisites before enrolling?

None.

Who is this course not for?

You want ready-made drills or a fitness programme; this course is about building and running the system, not session content. You are brand new to coaching and have not yet worked in an academy or youth team; most activities ask for examples from your own work. You measure academy success in youth trophies; the course is built on the idea that real success is how many reach the first team and stay there.