Gloucestershire Player Development founder Harrison Ward hopes his new company can become an academy-like atmosphere as he strives to make players better.
Ward, 29, has been all around the world in his quest to improve himself, as well as get a different perspective of culture and players elsewhere.
The man from Essex hopes to build his company up and create an academy-like system and is taking it seriously.
‘’An agency hasn’t really been on my mind but maybe like an academy is more on my mind where I can teach players, whether they’re learning, or getting things out of it.
‘’There are plans that I’ve got with the analysist and im going to have trials coming up and then having a Veo and an analysist so when players come to my trials they all have feedback of what they did.
‘’It’s not just ‘thanks for coming to the trial’ or ‘thanks for the money’. If worst comes to worst, they leave with a review like this is what you’ve done today and this is what you need to improve and they can take it back with them.
‘’It is massively important that people get something from it and it’s not that they feel like I just want their money. It’s similar to what Ange has done at Tottenham, coming from that environment, I want to do that for my company.’’
During his time overseas, Ward has seen a lot of potential turn to professional especially at American giant FC Dallas.
‘’I saw Chris Richards come through who went to Bayern Munich and now he’s at Crystal Palace, Ricardo Pepi who is at PSV now as a Striker, so in terms of the mentality of them wanting to be better than they were yesterday, I knew that they were going to make it.’’
Chris Richards left FC Dallas in 2019 for £4.6 Million and then made the move three years later for around £10.5 Million to join Patrick Viera’s Crystal Palace side.
The US international has struggled for minutes so far for Palace with just one league start to his name in the loss at Villa Park although he has started both Carabao Cup games to Plymouth and Manchester United respectively.
Ricardo Pepi, meanwhile has three goals in 10 league games for PSV after joining from Augsburg for around £9.6 Million.
Ward has a vast majority of his experience at Dallas where he saw Richards and Pepi progress and eventually make it to two giants of European football and playing in some of the best leagues in the world.
The Englishman then found himself in Uzbekistan to scout and look for talents to bring back to the UK to have trials at league clubs and eventually found one.
‘’I’ve got a boy from Uzbekistan who is now at Brooke house college, he’s got a trial at a club already and hopefully it goes well for him.
‘’He was 16/17 coming from over there to here, it can’t be easy with the language barrier.’’
The un-named youth player has got a trial set up with Leicester City to join their Grade A academy for the remainder of the season if he can impress the coaches.
It’s fair to say Ward is pleased with the work he has done in Asia and North America;
‘’To keep it short and sweet, it is really satisfying and it gives me the confidence and belief. I’m still quite young as a coach. I want my A-license. I want to be a first team coach one day and I want to go on and do big things and for me.
‘’Identifying players and this beginning bit is important for future growth, I’m very confident, I just need that chance and hopefully by setting this company up it shows people I can do it on my own.
‘’That’s the goal, to find the best potential areas, it doesn’t even need to be top level. Bowen is a great example. Even with steps one to four, I’m setting up my company to set up that pathway so it gives players a realistic chance.’’
Before Ward can fully begin to embark on his coaching journey in Gloucestershire, first he has to do a bit of re-con.
‘’So, what I’m trying to understand is the area I’m in, understand the needs and doing my ground work and building connections at the moment so when it comes to hosting events, I’ve got certain information to find players and invite them over and that networking for me and recruitment is key to begin with for the other stuff to go well.
‘’If I see someone with that potential and that (positive) attitude, that gives me the confidence to be like right: I’ve seen that and I can push that on and, I’ve done that recently but its where that experience has got me, I want to do it on my own and do it for a purpose and set it up properly so it can explode, it’s okay being a part of a club doing it here and there but when you’ve got an area like this with a lot of untapped potential, that’s my goal with it.’’
It is fair to say, Harrison Ward has not made the three-hour trip from London across to Gloucester just to chill. He is on it and looking to improve his connections.
