When Eagles Dare charts Crystal Palace F.C.’s remarkable resurgence from financial ruin and administration in 2010, to playing in the 2013 Championship Play-Offs for promotion to the Premier League.

When Eagles Dare

## I wanna be Edouard ##
> Signed as Palace's final addition of the summer '21 transfer window, Odsonne Edouard brought a known scoring ability to south London and proved his worth 28 seconds into his debut with a goal against Tottenham Hotspur.

Born in French Guiana, Edouard began his career in France with AF Bobigny and the Paris Saint-Germain Academy. He came to the fore in PSG’s development system as a prolific forward, netting over 60 goals in two seasons across teams and scoring just as much at international level; Édouard bagged 17 goals from 15 France Under-17 appearances.
 
This ability saw him named PSG fans’ Academy Player of the Year for 2015 and earned a professional contract with the senior side shortly after.
 
In 2016, Edouard began a loan with Toulouse which saw him make his competitive footballing debut. He joined Celtic on loan the following summer, scoring on his debut and earning a permanent deal in 2018.
 
Edouard’s performances helped the club win three Scottish Premiership titles, two Scottish Cups and two Scottish League Cups, and personally meant he won the SFWA Footballer of the Year 19/20 as the league’s top scorer.
 
He continued his international career while with Celtic, playing for France at Under-18, Under-19 and Under-21 levels. He won the 2015 European U17 Championship with France and was crowned the tournament’s Golden Player and top goalscorer, with a competition record eight goals – including three in the final. Overall, he has scored 43 goals from 51 international appearances.

He joined on August 31st, deadline day, and netted two goals on his debut against Tottenham Hotspur; the first coming 28 seconds after being substituted on.

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It is easy to forget that these aren’t yet professional footballers, but youngsters still at school. Their future is by no means guaranteed, and whether they make it to the very top or not an education is vital. Rowan Griffiths is the man to provide that.

“What are you going to do when football ends?” he says, speaking just around the corner from the state-of-the-art classrooms at the new Academy facility. “It’s not *if* football ends. You could play 500 games in the Premier League, but football is going to end.

“You might have millions in the bank – fantastic, brilliant, really happy for you. But are you going to be healthy and happy and content just playing golf all day? If you are, brilliant, but I’d like to think they got to that level because of the challenge, and they still want to work and still want to achieve.

“That’s why we’ve got ex-Premier League players working with us now. They’re here because they’ve got a passion to work and to achieve. Hopefully, even if the players are successful they’ll want to do something else in another life.

“You finish at 36 and hopefully you’ve got that amount of time and more to live again. So that’s what we’re trying to build into the thought process.”

Academy Head of Education

You might have millions in the bank - but are you going to be content just playing golf all day?

Griffiths has his own motto for the young players. “I use the phrase healthy distraction,” he explains.

“For me, there’s only three or four hours a day you can be a footballer. What else are you going to fill your day with? What else is going to keep you excited?

“My background is in athletics, and I’ve worked with Olympic and World \[Championship\] athletes. There are only so many hours they can be athletes – but traditionally athletic individuals have gone to university during their prime years of performance in the lead up.

“That’s their healthy distraction. For scholars and Under-23s, they are footballers and there is no traditional avenue of building up the rest of the working day. They come in, they train, they go home.

“We’re trying to make them think differently about their working day.”

It starts early on – Griffiths oversees the education of all ages from eight-years-old onwards. Regular contact is kept with primary schools to check in with students and offer support. But it is at secondary school that the real work begins.

“Starting in year seven – so Under-12s – we speak to the schools about how they have transitioned from primary to secondary, and how intense that becomes on top of their training weeks,” he says.

“Under-13s is when we start our hybrid programme. They come out two afternoons each week, and that’s an agreement with schools, parents and ourselves. We transport them to the Academy, where they do additional training, but we also do teaching in the classroom environment.

“The schools can ask us to cover certain subjects or certain topics, and again that’s about not making their education suffer due to being part of the Academy system.”

At the age where most students are moving into sixth-form, the Palace Academy youngsters are moving into a far more intense schedule.

“Our scholars technically become our students within school, even though we’re not a school,” Griffiths explains. “We’re wholly responsibly for their achievement and attainment here. They will all do a BTEC qualification as a norm, and some will do an A-Level – or even two A-Levels – on top of that.

Joe Sheridan did a full maths A-Level in one year via Zoom and got an A, whilst being full-time with the U18s.

“They are very high achieving students. Last year, five of the boys finished their A-Levels in the summer. One of our second year scholars, Joe Sheridan, did a full maths A-Level in one year via Zoom and got an A, whilst being full-time with the Under-18s.

“So the perception that footballers aren’t clever is completely untrue. We’ve got politics students, economics, arts, business and media students all doing A-Levels on top of a BTEC diploma.”

After the age of 18, there is no legal requirement for the players to continue with their education. But Griffiths is keen to change the collective mindset, encouraging further education as a positive opportunity that should be grabbed with both hands.

“What we’re trying to do with the Under-23s is extend that learning on offer,” he explains. “It’s a slow burner, because there has not been a traditional expectation that they do more education.

“There’s a new Head of Education at the Premier League called Dave Rainford, and his new target is to extend learning to the Under-23s. But at the minute they finish their scholar and get offered a pro \[contract\], and there’s a perception they’re professional footballers now, why would they need to?

“It’s about unpicking that mentality”

Under-18s defender Joe Sheridan

Part of that process is demonstrating to the players that their education can open doors for them within the game, giving them opportunities to make real progress on the pitch.

“At the minute the boys are doing language courses to help them if they go on loan abroad,” Griffiths reveals. “Reece Hannam and Scott Banks are the two Under-23s who have been pushing on this.

“Reece is learning Spanish and Scott is learning French. It is thinking about their opportunities and their options. I think Joe Hart went to play in Italy a few years ago and tried to give his first press conference in Italian.

“It wasn’t the greatest Italian, but he had a go and the fans really warmed to him because he had taken the time and effort to do it.”

But off the pitch it is important too. Griffiths firmly believes that a comprehensive education is crucial to developing as a character and a personality.

At the minute the boys are doing language courses to help them if they go on loan abroad.

“I think it makes them better players, I really do,” he says. “But it’s so good for them to have a passion elsewhere. When it comes to media interviews, it gives them something to talk about rather than the common phrases ‘at the end of the day’ and ‘to be fair’.

“They’ve got something else to talk about. One of our second year scholars, Jadan Raymond, is incredibly talented and has a massive passion for art and graphic design – and he is very good at it.

“He is an incredible artist. I can imagine that is a brilliant step away from all the pressures he had. He’s had a lot of focus playing for Wales, playing at a very high level and scoring goals for the Under-18s.”

Now 15 months into the job, Griffiths is already seeing his hard work come to fruition – a process that is incredibly rewarding.

“The stats from last summer about A-level and BTEC grades are significantly above average for boys in all areas,” he says proudly. “I know you’re getting smaller classes and smaller teaching groups, but there is no such thing as a dumb footballer.

“The boys’ working week for some of them here is way above what their peers are doing in sixth form. As a sixth former you might have one or two lessons on some days – these boys are in six days a week doing their training.

“Some of them are doing eight hours of A-Levels on top of nine hours of BTECs. They’re eating well, travelling distances. They’re sacrificing being a teenager.

“They make a huge amount of sacrifices, and they are such nice lads. Really professional, really nice. They’re having a great experience, no matter what the outcome is.

“I hope if and when they leave that they look back and are grateful for the opportunity that the chairman has provided them.”

It’s no easy task balancing the pressures of youth football with schoolwork and exams, but Rowan Griffiths and his team at the Academy are doing all they can to ease the process – while encouraging players to take more opportunities on the way.

It’s a tough road, but for this new generation of Palace youngsters the future looks bright.

There’s no end to the attention given to Academy players in the modern game. Individually tailored training, physiotherapy, video analysis, psychology, nutrition – the list goes on. But there’s a hugely important aspect that’s often overlooked. 

‘There’s no such thing as a dumb footballer’ – Academy Head of Education explains role

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Ferguson and Dr Zaf were greeted by the excited youngsters, aged six to 12, who had prepared questions for the pair about what it’s like being a professional footballer, how to stay motivated during hard times, and how to get into the world of football.

*You can see the session in full on BBC Match of The Day on Sunday 27 February from 7:35am on BBC One.*

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Get Involved x Match Of The Day<br><br>We were very proud to have <a href="https://twitter.com/mimwalkerkhan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mimwalkerkhan</a> alongside the <a href="https://twitter.com/BBCMOTD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BBCMOTD</a> crew attend our Get Involved session yesterday!👏🏻<br><br>A special day in which participants also got to meet <a href="https://twitter.com/Nathan6Ferguson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Nathan6Ferguson</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/sportsdrzaf?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sportsdrzaf</a>! 🤝<br><br>Keep an eye out for our session on TV📺 <a href="https://t.co/qhBZqppv3a">pic.twitter.com/qhBZqppv3a</a></p>&mdash; Palace for Life Fdn. (@PalaceForLife) <a href="https://twitter.com/PalaceForLife/status/1486746954067496963?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 27, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The Get Involved programme runs to increase physical activity specifically in those from Asian backgrounds, by removing barriers these individuals may have previously had had to sport.

Palace for Life maintain dialogue with the local community to ensure spaces are truly inclusive through means such as female only sessions, incorporating prayer time into sessions, moving sessions around the breaking of fast during Ramadan, and sessions for different ages and abilities.

The Foundation seeks to showcase positive role models, such as Doctor Zaf, to show that there is a place in football and sport for them.  Whilst encouraging social integration by linking with other Palace for Life programmes.

Palace defender Nathan Ferguson and club Doctor Dr Zaf met children at a Palace for Life Foundation Get Involved session at the new Academy after training, to find out more about the new programme.  

Ferguson meets children at Palace for Life Get involved event

Murangwa and his immediate family survived the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, after a solider recognised him from keeping goal for Rayon Sports, a notable football club. Murangwa also represented his native Rwanda internationally.

He told his story to Palace's Under-18s:

"A group of soldiers burst into the home where I was living with a friend of mine," he said. "And they were coming to kill us. So they came in, throw us on the floor, kicking us, going around throwing things up and down, when a photo album landed right next to one of the soldiers.

"The soldier picked up the album, looked at it and said: 'Are you Toto \[Murangwa's nickname, meaning 'Young One' in Swahili\]?' I said 'yes'. Then he looked at me again and I could see in his face it had changed and the next 10 minutes I sat in front of him with his machine gun in his hands and all he wanted to talk about was football.

"In that moment, football saved my life."

Today Murangwa has founded Football for Hope, Peace and Unity to use the sport as a tool to promote tolerance, unity and reconciliation in the hope of preventing tragedies like the 1994 genocide from occurring again.

Murangwa was awarded an MBE in 2018 (lead image).

His talk to the Under-18s was part of the club's wider educational support for Academy players, and saw them each light a candle to remember the millions of people who have lost their lives to genocide, specifically through Nazi persecution and genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Holocaust Memorial Day hopes to inspire a better future, and sees people across the United Kingdom light a candle in their windows at 8pm.

Crystal Palace Under-18s were given a talk by former Rwanda international goalkeeper Eric Murangwa Eugene as part of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Features

Features

‘There’s no such thing as a dumb footballer’ – Academy Head of Education explain...

Ferguson meets children at Palace for Life Get involved event

Palace Under-18s hear from genocide survivor Eric Murangwa Eugene

Shop online

Latest Videos

The Full 90: Crystal Palace 1-3 Liverpool | PalaceTV+

U18 Highlights: Birmingham City 0-4 Crystal Palace

Access All Over | Liverpool (H)

U23 Highlights: Crystal Palace 0-2 Liverpool

Extended Highlights: Crystal Palace 1-3 Liverpool

The media put their questions to Vieira after 1-3 defeat to Liverpool

22Odsonne
Édouard

Features

Features

‘There’s no such thing as a dumb footballer’ – Academy Head of Education explain...

Ferguson meets children at Palace for Life Get involved event

Palace Under-18s hear from genocide survivor Eric Murangwa Eugene

Shop online

Latest Videos

The Full 90: Crystal Palace 1-3 Liverpool | PalaceTV+

U18 Highlights: Birmingham City 0-4 Crystal Palace

Access All Over | Liverpool (H)

U23 Highlights: Crystal Palace 0-2 Liverpool

Extended Highlights: Crystal Palace 1-3 Liverpool

The media put their questions to Vieira after 1-3 defeat to Liverpool

22OdsonneÉdouard

22Odsonne
Édouard