Animosity has divided the two parties – one side sees itself as the owner of football in Lebanon, decrying academies as mere business ventures while the other bemoans the other’s lack of organization and professionalism.
“We know how they operate,” Nakhid says. “[The Lebanese Under 13 national team] played a game against our under 13s before they traveled to a tournament in Qatar, we beat them 4-1 and they asked us for four players. They must know about us, [all our age groups beat everyone.] That’s not a way to work.
They are still angry with me and I understand but we will not let them go in those circumstances. If they were organized as they should be they would have looked at these players. It’s not fair to our players and not fair to their players.
“There is a huge pool that they are neglecting.
“Why are we so much more organized than the national team when we travel? They travel with 22 players; we have 134, much more complicated logistics than them and we handle it much better, why is that? It’s all about the work and having football at the heart.”
Nakhid has made attempts to bridge the gap and continues his quest to find a way to integrate his teams into regular competitive football that can be seen around the country.
“We had them play in the second division a couple of years ago. We got a license to play but the problem with the second division is that it is disorganized and can be violent.
“A lot of our kids were in high school and a lot of times we played games and I was scared for me, so you can imagine how scared [for my players] I was.
“We scrapped that idea.”
His new idea is very similar just one level higher.
“You need to play every weekend to stay competitive. What we are thinking about is getting a first division license, it will be less violent and fewer conspiracies involved because it’s more in the open. It won’t happen this year but it might happen next year.”
Regardless of how DNA teams fare in local competition – they compete regularly in friendly matches with the country’s senior sides, and rarely lose – it is in the international arena where the academy has flourished.
“All we can do is take them out as much as we can, to play in Barcelona, London to keep them competitive.”
“Most of our first team are 20 or under so we have time.”
“What we do, we try to get them as much exposure in international tournaments. We first went to Como in Italy, we went to San Marino, tournaments that were at a good level but not the highest level and then began to go to the Welsh Cup and now we are at the pinnacle, the MIC Tournament in Barcelona and the boys [did] very well at all levels. That’s the only way, no one is going to come to Lebanon to look for players.
“You can see the way they play football here and the state of the national team.
“We have had a few players [attract interest], we have a player going off to play a tournament in Belgium with Standard Leige, we have players with a lot of talent, they just need to be seen more often. They travel and we play against high end competition,” he says.
“Barcelona, Man United, Tottenham. We beat Tottenham 2-1, Reading beat us 2-1 but they played some professionals. The Reading coach spoke to me afterward and was quite [interested] to have a relationship with us, he thought we were the national team.”
“We have played against Brescia in a game that Bob Al-Hajj went crazy and the Brescia players were holding him up after, our boys have done quite well.”
Interest has already come in from all corners of Europe.”
“We have a player who Tottenham showed a lot of interest called Abbas Sleiman, he has been with us since 2007 and he made quite an impression in England. I’m sure he will be one of the players to play in Europe.
“You just need to keep getting them exposed, teams keep getting better and we just need to keep up with them,” Nakhid says.
It’s about playing, not winning:
Pass and move, pass and move. The philosophy at the David Nakhid Academy (DNA) is quite simple.“To understand the game and to play good football,” Nakhid tells The Daily Star while surrounded by a throng of enthusiastic teenagers.
“It’s all about the work, it’s about what you prioritize. We hold up Barcelona and Arsenal as a model to copy for our players. They have to be humble to take what we give to them. To play good football, you can’t cheat, you have to play both sides of the ball.”
It is a system that has taken time to bear fruit, but fresh from 2-1 win over Premier League Tottenham Hotspur’s Under 19’s team, Nakhid has reason to be happy with himself and the faith in his philosophies.
Over 100 young players practice at the Mabarrah playing fields in Beirut, enduring stifling temperatures, during the summer training camp. Almost every child is comfortable with the ball at this feet, plays with his head in the air scanning for options and player movement is constant creating fast paced, whirlwind football. And that is just how Nakhid likes it.
“We teach them that [passing football] is the most important thing,” says Nakhid, “It is not about winning, we are an academy we are about developing players. It’s my duty to see that when a player does not understand the game when he comes in [to the academy], that when he leaves he can play football. That means it’s definitely not about winning. We used to get our butts kicked quite a lot but now we beat everyone and we beat them playing good football.”
The former Trinidad and Tobago midfielder finished his playing career with Ansar at the turn of the century, since then he has made his mission to produce good Lebanese footballers.
“We went to Barcelona we played 40 or 50 teams and I didn’t see anyone as talented as the Lebanese players. The Lebanese are genuinely talented but it comes down to the work.
“I set it up here, I have my family and things are going well, it’s a logical conclusion.”
Nakhid’s academy is not the only one in Lebanon. On the contrary many of the country’s best young players are housed in private academies rather than in professional league club’s centers of excellence.
“The clubs see academies as a nuisance, and they think we are taking their best players.
“There’s a reason people pay for us, they are sure they will learn something. It’s for the clubs to sort it out, not us. We have the best coaches in Lebanon and its shows, look at our players. The clubs are too drawn along sectarian lines. I don’t know where [my players] are from and I don’t care, I want to see what he can do on the field. It was not like that when I first came, I thought I was in Europe again.”
So why do players come to his academy instead of others’?
“The academies to be honest are purely business. You see the way they play and they way they do business, they’re all about winning to try and keep the parents happy and the students happy. We have played against teams that have no idea how to play, they aren’t concerned, they tell them to get out there and win. When we began we lost, if we win then great but I’m not happy with a win unless we play good football. It’s important that people can leave here and say I learned at DNA, I know how to play football, I understand football.”
While the success of academies in Lebanon is a great source of encouragement – teams from DNA and rivals ASA regularly take young Lebanese abroad to play top opposition, often beating their more illustrious opponents – an underlying problem still lies between Lebanon’s best footballers and the country’s administrative body.