Kirkby to Cairo: LFC goes global

Click here for more information on today's announcement>>

Now Head of the LFC International Football Academy Soccer Schools unit, Turner joined the club in 2010 with a mandate to take coaching the 'Liverpool Way' global. Almost two years on and things are starting to take shape with Liverpool FC now having a serious presence in not just the UK and Ireland but also Greece, Cyprus, Indonesia, Scandinavia, the United States and now Egypt.

For Turner, who heads up a team based at the club's city centre headquarters, it's an exciting time to be working for the club he grew up supporting.

Liverpoolfc.tv caught up with Steve Turner in Cairo to ask what today's announcement means for the football club and his department in particular...

Steve Turner: Before we talk about where we are now in terms of the LFC International Football Academy Soccer Schools, it's worth going back a few years to how this all started. Part of the initial screening process when we're looking for young players is to invite all of the five and six-year-olds from all schools within the Merseyside region every Saturday morning for a little bit of fun playing football. On the odd occasion that we do find some talent that's worth a second look, we'll then invite them back for a smaller group session with the hope that if there's any budding talent out there, Liverpool will be the first club to spot them.

What we experienced was that so many parents would ring up the Academy afterwards and say, 'My little boy had a soccer trial on Saturday. He's not very good but he had a brilliant time. Is there any way he can come back and receive some more coaching?' That's how our Soccer Schools was born because that was quite a regular occurrence. So what we decided to do was open up some football camps during the school holidays to cater for the non-elite footballers; the kids who just wanted the experience of being surrounded by Liverpool coaches and who could receive some proper coaching.

That evolved and we set up a section on the website to be able to accommodate bookings and before we knew it we found that we were getting lots of bookings - not just from the UK but from all over the world. From Scandinavia, from Asia and from the United States - all four corners of the globe because people wanted to visit the Academy and receive Liverpool coaching. It was only really when the club decided that it was unfair to bring fans across the world to be coached by us here that we thought, how could we take part of the club to them? For many fans abroad, the first team pre-season tours was really the only opportunity people could get to connect and touch hands with the club. Apart from watching the team on the television or following them on our website, pre-season tours was normally as close as any fan from abroad could get to the club.

We felt that if Liverpool could create something that was mobile enough to take to these fans then that would really give us the satisfaction of being able to provide something for our supporters overseas and that's really how the whole Soccer Schools concept was born.

Ian Ayre, who was Commercial Director at the time, felt that because we didn't have the resources to manage that all from Liverpool, the best way to reach out to the people was to develop a franchise in partnership with locally-based partners and in turn, connecting Liverpool with the people who understand the differences in geography, culture, climate and religion. That was really, really important because we just don't have the resources or the knowledge to do that from Liverpool.

That's where I came on board because of the focus on franchising and that form of partnership was my background. Before I came to Liverpool, I worked for an outdoor clothing brand called Timberland for 10 years and I was responsible for their global franchise operation. Timberland have got in excess of 200 stores around the world but only about 10% of these are owned by Timberland, the rest are all owned by franchise partners around the world and the whole idea is to keep that name operating around the world but with locally based experts. That's what Ian Ayre called me in for.

Click here to see some pictures from LFC's visit to Cairo on our official Facebook page>>

The key thing is consistency. Wherever we are around the world and regardless of what language we're speaking and what climate we're operating under, it's really important that the facilities on offer are of the standard Liverpool FC and our supporters expect. The idea is that we want the Soccer School at Liverpool to be a model for the Soccer School in Indonesia, the Soccer School in Norway, the Soccer School in the US and now this Soccer School in Egypt. They all look the same. The coaches over here wear what our coaches back in Liverpool wear and they'll be teaching the things that our coaches in Liverpool teach.

The venue and the coaching must be of a particularly high standard, the equipment has to be the same equipment used at our Liverpool Academy and even the tiny details, down to what happens if a young player falls over and scrapes his knee must replicate what happens in Liverpool, in terms of first aid administered. 

A lot of the other English Premier League clubs use the term 'Soccer Schools' to sell coaching to young kids but bearing in mind the fact that our operation was born out of the Academy, and bearing in mind that we are going internationally on this, the name LFC International Football Academy Soccer Schools exists for a reason.  This is about more than just turning up in a Liverpool kit and putting on a few coaching sessions. This is the vehicle that the club are using to carry football-related activities all around the world.

Extending Liverpool's reach across the world appears to be one of the main drivers of the LFC International Football Academy Soccer Schools project... 

Absolutely. We've been involved in a number of camps with Standard Chartered, who are using this mobile facility of coaching to take the club all around the world, which is absolutely brilliant but what we're doing here in Egypt is on a whole new level. Up until January 2010, the only permanent youth coaching facility we had was operating from our own Academy in Kirkby but I'm delighted to say that since then we've established successful partnerships in Greece, in Cyprus and all over Scandinavia in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

We've crossed the Irish Sea into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and we've just recently agreed to have our first permanent base in north Texas in the United States. We've also recently opened up a permanent Academy and Soccer School in Indonesia. Now, we're delighted to today welcome our most recent addition to the family in the form of this Academy in Egypt.

The growth of this part of the football club over the last 12 months has been amazing and we intend to keep trying to build that up - purely so we can give as many kids around the world access to being coached the 'Liverpool way'.

In terms of picking the partners we as a club choose to work with in places such as Egypt, can you explain how that works? 

We only want to work with partners who understand what the club is about and really appreciate what we are trying to achieve. We have a strict criteria of what we're looking for in a partner which forms part of our general due diligence that we undertake before we enter into any relationship - what is their track record in sports? What is their knowledge of the local market and what the market wants? Having said that though, I think one of the most important things, and you can't really put it down on any sort of checklist, is 'gut feeling'. Sometimes you just know if you're speaking with the right partner and, bearing in mind that the club was built on people and built on trust, I think that's a really important factor. You just know whether the partner is going to be the right partner or the wrong partner.

A lot of people who make enquiries are big Liverpool followers, so they do have a genuine belief in the club and as a brand, which I think is really important.

We've opened Soccer Schools in Europe, America, Indonesia and Asia but today's announcement in Cairo marks the first one in the Middle East. Exciting times? 

Yes, it is. When we launched the first Soccer Schools we targeted Western Europe, due to the natural following that we had in Ireland and Scandinavia, but I think that this is a really good opportunity for the club to be able to connect with fans in a particularly non-Westernised country. There's a lot of things that we don't have the knowledge or the expertise to be able to overcome, if that's the right word, in terms of understanding the local culture, geography, climate and religion. All of these things are really, really important in all the countries that we're deciding to set up partnerships with. And again, that's where the right partner comes in - somebody who can help us with that. Because regardless of colour or creed, we just want to give kids around the world the opportunity to have access to Liverpool coaching. 

Have Liverpool set up this Academy with the sole aim of finding new talent for the first team?

That's not our objective, as first and foremost our sole aim is to get kids playing football and enjoying the game. However, should we identify a player who demonstrates exceptional promise, we have a strict procedure in place to ensure that the player concerned is referred to our recruitment professionals based at our Academy in Kirkby and headed up by Frank McParland.

We've seen a lot of media interest over here to today's announcement.  Liverpool Football Club setting up a permanent base in Cairo is a big sports news story in the Middle East, isn't it? 

Definitely. Other clubs have done things with varying amounts of success but this is the first full-time set up out here. We've got a permanent base and we've got our own Liverpool coaches out here permanently too. The complex where it's located - here at the Madinaty Sports Club - is very impressive. Madinaty is effectively a small state-of-the-art city that's being built as an extension to New Cairo and designed to accommodate over up to one million inhabitants. There are lots of first class leisure facilities here including golf courses as well as tennis and athletics.

The biggest thing however is it will be the permanent base of the first LFC International Football Academy Soccer School in the Middle East.

This particular venture in Egypt, when it officially opens, will be a fully fledged Academy rather than simply a Soccer School. Can you explain the difference? 

Originally, we wanted to try and replicate what we did at the Liverpool Academy in terms of operating Soccer Schools. For want of a better phrase, it's what's termed locally as a 'pay-to-play-basis', where young players will pay a fee in return for being coached by Liverpool coaches. While we've successfully replicated that particular model throughout Scandinavia, Greece, Cyprus and throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland, we just find that wherever we go around the world, that particular model doesn't always necessarily work. All countries are different in one way or another, some more so than others, and I think it's also important to remember that there are differences in economy as well. What works in Norway, doesn't necessarily work in Egypt. We're really mindful of that and that's the beauty of what we're doing because what we can do now is create bespoke models to suit particular markets.

In answer to your original question, yes we have replicated soccer schools around the world but what we have been asked for quite a lot recently is for Liverpool Football Club to help set up football development structures. In Egypt, we've been asked to replicate the complete set-up of our Academy over here. The attention to detail is incredible; from the number of pitches to what types of grass: artificial, indoor or outdoor. How many kids, how many coaches and what the ratio of coaches to kids are. The frequency of sessions, how we manage it when kids are visiting in between school hours, how we manage it from a health and safety perspective, from a recreational perspective and from an educational perspective. These are all things that we share. We're showing our partners in Egypt how we run our Academy and we've provided fully trained Liverpool FC coaches to oversee the football training. Now we're really looking forward to it flourishing over the coming months and years.

Finally, what has the feedback been like from the children who've attended the soccer schools - whether in the British Isles, Europe, Asia or anywhere else? 

Very positive. We get an awful amount of children who want to come back time and time again. It's a great recreational thing that we do and it's great fun as well - the kids really, really enjoy it and they want to come back and they want to tell their friends. Speaking personally, I just enjoy seeing the kids having a great time. The club was built on people and it's all about giving something back. 

A lot of our partners around the world also want to give something back to the community. For example, in Northern Ireland, our official partner is a registered charity and we've done a lot of projects with them which revolve around providing football coaching for disabled and partially-sighted children. It's very, very rewarding - not just for the kids but also for the coaches and for the club itself. That is the pivot of all the action as far as I'm concerned: the community. That's what the club was built on and its elements of that that we will be continuing with every single soccer school around the world. It will be exactly the same here in Egypt. It's really important that our partners know what the club is about and they will know how important it is to treat everybody as the same and to give something back to your fellow man.

To find out more about the LFC International Football Academy Soccer Schools, click here>> 

For contact details about the new LFC Academy in Egypt, click here>>