The foundation of the Premier Youth Academy is the highly successful and worldwide recognised Dutch Development Philosophy, ranked by FIFA in the highest category of quality. Dutch Lions FC will work with experienced Dutch coaches only to guarantee top player development on the technical and tactical level. The key objective is to develop young players as much as possible and have several players from the Dayton region become professional soccer players in our Men's or Women's Professional team and also Europe.
To quarantuee the quality of the Academy the Dutch Lions FC have established a partnership with Dutch Premier League club FC Twente, which Academy was voted Best Academy in 2007 and 2008. They also won the Championship of the Premier League of Holland in 2010.
Dutch Lions FC works with a Coaching Manual to make sure that all coaches train, play and coach their teams the same way as far as game tactics and player development. So the quality of the coaching stays the same and does not mainly depend on the Coach. Also integrated in the Academy are video analysis every 6 weeks (or more often if needed), individual coach-player evaluations (four), individual coach-parent evaluations (two), several workshops (such as nutrition) and a mentoring program with our professional players.
We believe our unique combination of technical, tactical, physical and mental development will give kids (and their parents) a better chance to develop themselves as much as possible. When we feel our academy teams are strong enough, we will organize soccer tours to Europe to compete against the best youth teams, enter in recognized international tournaments and arrange (summer) trials for our best players with FC Twente or other European clubs through our extensive network in Europe.
Therefore Dutch Lions FC is the 'Gateway to professional soccer!'
Player Development Model Dutch Lions FC
Age 4-7 Game/fun
Age 7-11 Technical and tactical fundamentals
Age 11-13 Learning to train
Age 13-16 Training to grow
Age 16-18 Training to win
Age 18+ Training to excel
Looking at the technical and tactical fundamentals in our model, it explains why we start in 2010 in our Premier Academy with teams only from U7-U12. Without these fundamentals at this age, we believe it is almost impossible to become a professional player for the top clubs in Europe. From these age groups, we like to educate kids for the coming 6-10 years according to the Dutch and FC Twente player development model, which has been very succesfull in Europe the last few years.
All coaches in the Premier Academy have a UEFA A or B license or are professional players that are in the process of obtaining this license. All coaches in the Amateur Academy have a minimum of UEFA C license or are professional players that are in the process of obtaining this license. There will be a lot of Dutch coaches in our Academy.