FC Midtjylland

• FC Midtjylland have launched their own academy and are aiming to emulate FC Barcelona’s La Masia by producing a future Ballon d’Or winner.

• Part of the academy’s philosophy is to integrate the club’s senior players with youngsters from the age of five, asking them to join coaching lessons, teach them tricks and share their experience.

• Guldminen (“The Gold Mine”) is part of a long-term strategy to improve the senior squad and talent development by using statistical data and analytical research, which has already been implemented in player recruitment and match analysis for a number of years.

If confidence is currently at an all-time high at FC Midtjylland, it is hardly surprising. “The Wolves” may not have defended their Danish Superliga title last season and they also recently lost highly rated coach Brian Priske to Royal Antwerp in Belgium, but the Jutland side, who were born out of a merger between Ikast FS and Herning Fremad 22 years ago, proved they had the ambition and strength to compete with the European elite when they held Liverpool and Atalanta to impressive draws in their UEFA Champions League debut season.

However, the unsung Danes will not rest on their laurels on the back of their impressive international campaign. The club plans to expand its stadium, build a new training facility for the first team, and further develop their Guldminen youth academy, through which they are aiming to emulate the success of Barcelona’s prestigious La Masia academy by producing a future Ballon d’Or winner.

The school, which first opened its gates in 2019 to children from the age of five, is in high demand on the back of the club’s remarkable Champions League campaign and their impressive record of producing young talent. Currently, 75 youngsters have made their way to the promised land, but more than 200 young footballers are expected to be enrolled in the academy in the future.

Most people would expect children to receive invitations on the back of their football skills, but instead balance and coordination feature as key enrolment criteria, with youngsters taking classes in judo, athletics, dance and yoga to develop their athletic abilities and strengths.

Star performers from the senior squad like Erik Sviatchenko, Anders Dreyer and Pione Sisto play a key role in providing inspiration for the youngsters to succeed at the academy. Senior players share their experience of taking part in big games, teach the kids new tricks and occasionally eat with the youngsters too. Danish national-team captain Simon Kjær, who developed his talents at the FC Midtjylland academy before taking his first steps in a long and impressive career, praises the initiative and says, “If I’d had the opportunity to offer something like that for my boys, I would certainly have done it.”

The academy is symbolic of the scientific and analytical strategy that characterises FC Midtjylland’s approach to success in football, whether in their training methods (from the age of five up to the senior squad), their tactical solutions on the pitch or in recruiting young talent. Despite being a very young club, FC Midtjylland have already used statistics and data to great effect in terms of analysing the game to maximise the benefits on the pitch and to provide underrated players with an unexpected chance to shine – with the aim of offloading them for large profits in the future.

As such, FC Midtjylland received around EUR 35 million in transfer fees by selling Alexander Sørloth, Rasmus Kristensen, Simon Kjær, Bubacarr Sanneh and Paul Onuachu after developing them into first-team regulars. All of them, with the exception of Sanneh, graduated from the academy.

The club began applying deeper metrics in 2014. They appointed throw-in and ball-striking experts to analyse their players’ strengths and weaknesses, to evaluate individual performances, and to produce a strategy to hurt their opponents. Some football experts criticised the initiative, claiming that a Moneyball approach (the use of statistical analysis by so-called smaller teams to help them compete by buying assets that are undervalued by other teams and selling ones that are overvalued by other teams) could not be transferred from baseball to football – but FC Midtjylland subsequently proved them wrong.

Seven years ago, the club installed a special scouting system to analyse more than 60 leagues, looking at statistical and mathematical data from player performances across the world in an effort to eliminate the most subjective impressions of a player. Today, FC Midtjylland approach matches with almost forensic precision in terms of analysing their opponents. The club are now particularly famous for their strength at set pieces, and impressively, 49% of their goals last season were scored in this way.

There is certainly some symbolism in the fact that FC Midtjylland have named their school “The Gold Mine”. Data science and football theory is making a difference for the Jutland side, and with youngsters from the age of five being invited to learn and live by the club’s philosophy, “The Wolves” are already creating a platform for their next golden generation.