The World’s Team – nj.com

MUNICH – One by one, NFL Academy players march in all black, their rubber cleats click-clacking on asphalt paths through see-your-breath cold, to Field No. 5 inside the Freiham Sports Park on a Friday night.

They have come to rekindle a rivalry with IMG Academy’s Varsity team two days prior to the New York Giants and Carolina Panthers playing at Allianz Arena. Inside the gate, there are no bleachers or game clock, and while the turf is lined for 100 yards, it measures seven yards short. Beers are three and a half euros; spectators drink in the scene as staffers on the field lean against the lopsided goalpost to ensure it does not fall again.

Battle lines are announced by IMG tailback Shepherd Miller.

“If you’re not wearing our jersey,” he shouts, “F— you!”

NFL Academy coach Steve Hagen addresses his team, which is composed of 67 players from 19 countries and territories across Europe, Asia and Africa. They speak 23 languages.

“You set the tempo by how you hit people!” he says. “You have to prove it over and over and over.”

Validation comes amid violent collisions. Started as a European outpost, the NFL Academy, which is based in the English countryside, is the multibillion dollar league’s first venture into education, and costs are high. Tuition and fees are $31,000, and the NFL Academy probes for prospects abroad while youth football participation rates decline stateside due to concerns regarding chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E. Enrollees work out with Guardian shells over helmets, ride stationary bicycles in heat chambers and take transatlantic flights to compete at American showcases in order for recruiters to gauge their skill level. Money flows as the league doubles down on international investments with a second academy opening in Australia this year.

“Ultimately, we want to see some guys in the NFL,” says Lamonte Winston, the NFL Academy’s director. “Before that, they have to learn the game. European teams don’t want to play us anymore because we smash them.”

The NFL’s fraternity of foreign-born players is growing, and local teams’ evaluators are eyeing tenderfeet for future drafts. The Giants, Jets and Eagles all employ imports, with Australian left tackle Jordan Mailata, who left rugby for football when he was drafted by the Eagles in 2018 being the most impactful. Their scouts keep tabs on global markets. Once a curiosity who emerged from the International Player Pathway, Mailata is now an ambassador for the NFL Academy.

But the academy’s early returns are varied as national signing day passes and college bowl season commences. Academy alumni are at Tennessee, Boise State, Colorado and Oklahoma. Others are routed to Lenoir-Rhyne, a Division II program, and Laney College, which was featured on Netflix’s “Last Chance U.”

The academy draws recruits between 16 and 19 years old with transferrable skills from rugby, Gaelic football, soccer and basketball backgrounds. The quarterback is Austrian; a defensive lineman is Japanese. An Irishman kicks field goals; a Dutchman returns punts. A Dane plays defensive back; the right tackle is Finnish. Fourteen Germans are on the roster.

“The Germans have been playing since they were little kids,” says Chase Baker, the academy’s defensive line coach. “They are the most well-adapted, physically prepared. They will eat glass, do whatever the hell it takes. They don’t care.”

A German dervish is on display in Justus Seelig, a 5-foot-6, 180-pound tailback who was born in Colorado but raised in Dresden by parents who are German engineers. To open the scoring against IMG, he slips out of the backfield during a fake reverse for a 22-yard touchdown reception, untouched, and then lines up as the long snapper. He follows that with a 45-yard touchdown run. The Netherlands’ Thayrancel Pinas returns a punt 45 yards for a score; Austrian tight end Luca Wolf attempts to hurdle a cornerback before planting his left cleat in the counterpart’s facemark. Finally, British tailback Didi Georgiou rushes in for a fourth score.

“It is really important to me that Americans start to realize that Europeans can play,” says Seelig, who has been invited to the U.S. Army All American Bowl this week. “We play high quality football and we’re striving for recognition.”

The NFL Academy leads, 27-0, before personal fouls and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties come. When the NFL Academy throws an interception, its wideout unleashes a helmet-to-helmet hit on a defensive back during the return. When IMG scores a touchdown, the extra point attempt is blocked. When an IMG player is whistled for unsportsmanlike conduct, a Swedish defensive back waves goodbye as Super Bowl XXI MVP Phil Simms looks on a few yards away.

“Could you imagine 20 years ago, you go over to Germany and see high school teams play and go, ‘wow, that’s high level football, like big time stuff,‘” he says. “Not me. I’ve seen it with my eyes now. I was caught by surprise with the talent.″

Six IMG players are helped off with injuries; the academy continues its all-out assault. In the third quarter, Selig takes a handoff and sprints 69 yards to up the score to 40-12. He counts with his fingers – one, two, three – for his scores.

“Ju-stus See-lig!” his friends, who drove five hours to attend, chant as they clank beer bottles together in the corner. “Ju-stus See-lig!”

He finishes with flair. In the final seconds, the NFL Academy runs the ball within the IMG Academy 5-yard line before settling into its victory formation. Prior to the final snap, Seelig sprints to substitute in at tailback. As soon as reserve quarterback Bobby Bridges, of England, receives the ball and takes the final knee, Seelig performs a backflip.

NFL Academy director Lamonte Winston addresses the offensive linemen prior to a game against IMG Academy. Kevin Armstrong | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The Experiment

The NFL was probing for a pipeline. It was 2019, and the league had been sending teams to London for games the previous 12 years. An office was opened in Leicester Square, but if the league wanted to grow the game beyond converting fans, officials recognized a need to invest in player development at younger levels. To do so, they started the International Player Pathway, which readied prospects for the annual draft. Still seeking to connect with a younger demographic, an academy for high school-age teenagers would afford them a longer runway to develop more fully.

Tryouts for the academy’s first class were held in London, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which had just opened as the first soccer-first facility in Europe with a dedicated space for American football. When Timothy Schürmann, a linebacker from Switzerland, walked in, he started shaking.

“Because it was so big and so grand,” he said.

Their actual facilities were considerably smaller. On the first day, they reported to Barnet and Southgate College in North London. To accommodate football players, the school transformed a theater into a gymnasium with 10 squat racks and bumper plates, but fields were harder to find. Each day, the players lifted weights at 6 a.m. and then took classes. They rode a bus 20 minutes to a second campus for film study in random classrooms, then took a 20-minute ride to another field for a workout.

“We got the weights from NFL teams that were in London for games,” Schürmann said.

Football in Europe was often a numbers game. In England, they don’t play 11-man football until they are 16 years old. Growing up, they play five on five. In Italy, they play 9-on-9. In Germany, it is flag football as a youth. The norm for European teams was to practice twice a week; the academy increased that to three. Games were scheduled, but then Covid-19 came; only intra-squad contests were held.

The academy was mobile. After two years, the operation uprooted and relocated two hours north to Loughborough College, where Great Britain’s Olympians work out. In August, athletes who trained at Loughborough claimed 16 medals (four gold, four silver, eight bronze) in swimming, triathlon, rowing, athletics and cycling. If classified as its own country, Loughborough would have ranked 16th in the world.

Football was foreign to the U.K., though. When football players first arrived, their presence turned heads. Peter Clarke, a 6-foot-4 tight end in his third year with the academy, recalled awkward encounters.

“When the rugby boys or the soccer boys would come in and see a whole football team working out, it would be quite a funny interaction,“ Clarke said. “They didn’t quite understand what we did. They think we’re soft because we wear helmets and shoulder pads.”

Following that year, coach Tony Allen was replaced by Hagen, who had been a Jets tight ends coach in 2015 and recently coached in Florence, Italy, during the pandemic. Hagen, 63, and his staff harped on high-speed processing and increased the number of practices to five each week. To combat language barriers, play calls were signaled from the sidelines. To callous tenderfeet to the collision sport’s demands, they walked to weightlifting sessions in predawn darkness. In classrooms, English was spoken exclusively at the intersection of Hogwarts and “Hard Knocks.”

“We just need a couple of magic wands,” Hagen says. “But we haven’t got that yet. We teach it, test it, teach it, test it. Not everybody can survive. We’ve had guys who quit because they can’t do it five days a week like we do in America.”

Michael Szabo, a 19-year-old quarterback from Austria, embraced it all. He started playing football at 5 years old, and his family celebrated Super Sunday as an annual gathering. He played for the Vienna Vikings for 14 years, and tried out for the academy at a combine in Frankfurt, Germany, this year.

Michael Szabo, a quarterback from Vienna, wears a GoPro affixed to his helmet to review what he sees on the field during practice. Kevin Armstrong | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

“A week before summer camp started, middle of July, they called me and said, ‘Come over, we need you. We want you,’” Szabo said. “I said, ‘Let’s go!‘ I always wanted this lifestyle: football all the time. I don’t know what I would do without football. Football is just, for me, everything.”

He has a football tattooed onto his left forearm and wears a GoPro affixed to the front of his helmet during practice. He speaks English and German, as well as a little Spanish. Within two months of attending the academy, he heard from Villanova recruiters, who told him they would be watching when he faced De La Salle of Concord, Calif. at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in October. Adjustments are ongoing.

“To be honest, I don’t like the British accent,” Szabo said. “I had issues at first: ‘Say that again, say that again.’”

Repetition is crucial, but players find it hard to remember where practice is because workouts rotate among four fields miles apart. Even at one facility that has the NFL’s shield logo at midfield, a hole needed to be cut to fit a goalpost.

One Saturday morning, Hagen, who does not have a car in England, rode his bicycle from his office to a fenced-in field, where Ben Kuk, of Hong Kong, struggled with the gate lock.

“The other side, Ben!” Hagen said.

The academy maintains no permanent locker room. Players reside in dorms nearby and carry their pads to and from workouts. To conclude practice, Hagen gathered his players by the end zone on a soccer field.

“Watch college football today,” he said. “Watch how fast. Watch how physical.”

He stated where they would practice the next day.

“Rugby grass field tomorrow behind the netball courts,” he said.

Many nodded, but several stared blankly.

“Does everybody know where that is?” he says.

Endless cycles

Rafael Varona-Blakstad knew the NFL Academy existed, but it was not the reason for his visit to Loughborough last fall. Lost on the campus as he looked for the building where a talk about the school was scheduled to be held on a day for prospective students, he happened upon Winston, the academy director, and asked for directions. Winston eyed the 6-foot-5, 175-pound teenager and asked his own question.

“Have you ever thought about playing football?” Winston said.

Varona-Blakstad, 18, had tried soccer, rowing, tennis, basketball and baseball in his youth. He had only played loosely in public parks with friends back in London. His sport was rugby, and he was elite, having played for the 18-and-under team in the renowned Saracens program. But as Varona-Blakstad went about the rest of his campus visit, he happened upon the academy’s practice on a side field.

“Completely different from rugby,” he said. “Music playing at practice. Different culture – that got me hooked.”

The NFL Academy maintains one office at the Loughborough University in England. Kevin Armstrong | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

To complete the recruitment, Varona-Blakstad received a video call from Hagen shortly thereafter. By then, Hagen was at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where the NFL trains prospective foreign players before the NFL Draft each winter. Hagen handed the phone to Louis Rees-Zammit, a Welsh rugby winger who played in the English Premiership before transitioning to the Jacksonville Jaguars’ practice squad as a 22-year-old wideout in August.

“Don’t make the mistake I made,” Rees-Zammit said. “If I could do it all over again, I’d choose football over rugby.”

Varona-Blakstad came, but there is no feeder system for the academy so the NFL recruits year-round. For kicker Andy Quinn of Ireland, he was discovered when he kicked a pair of 45-yard field goals in front of 43,000 fans during halftime of the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in 2022. For Emanuel Okoye, of Nigeria, it was being discovered by former Giants pass rusher Osi Umenyiora and invited to a camp in Ghana before earning a place at the NFL Academy. For Seelig, it was as an opponent that the NFL Academy first sized him up. He was playing for the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns.

“I just made pretty much everyone on their defense miss, and the coaches were like, ‘We want him,’” Seelig says. “That is how they started recruiting me.”

While the NFL Academy’s prospecting knows no bounds, there are limits to the usage of several players this year. At 19, Seelig was able to play against Massillon (Ohio) High when the NFL Academy traveled to Beaverton, Ore., to play a game at Nike’s corporate headquarters; Varona-Blakstad was ineligible because of a visa issue. Seelig was ineligible to play against De La Salle High from Concord, Calif., even though the game was played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, because De La Salle’s opponents have to comply with California’s state association rules, but Varona-Blakstad suited up and scored on a ricochet reception.

“There is a plan, but you never know because you are dealing with different cultures and different people,” says Kris Durham, the academy’s head of football. “In the states, it doesn’t matter if the NBA Finals are on: No one can mess with the NFL. Here, we are a tertiary sport.”

Changes to the recruitment process disrupted the academy’s plans to place alumni at American colleges. With the introduction of the transfer portal and NIL opportunities incentivizing players to stay on campus longer, the pool of available college scholarships has shrunk. They also learned that American recruiters were unimpressed by the academy’s 53-8 win over the Düsseldorf Panthers or a 51-0 win over La Courneuve Flash in Paris.

“The American coaches know the American teams,” Hagen says. “They don’t have any idea what these European teams are, nor do they respect them at that level. So they are like, ‘Who do you play? Who do you play?’ If we don’t play those teams, we get zero respect.”

The academy typically plays four games in the fall and three in the spring. In the last three years, IMG Academy Varsity, Brooklyn’s Erasmus Hall, Edgewater (Fla.) High and De La Salle have traveled to England for games so recruiters can see academy pupils against better competition. Nike, the NFL’s apparel provider, is the corporate matchmaker, arranging for teams they sponsor to play the academy.

“Is the NFL Academy at the level of the top high school teams in the U.S.? They are definitely not,” said Massillon coach Nate Moore, whose Tigers beat the NFL Academy, 35-20, in August, “but they have a linebacker who is really good. We didn’t have him on film. We don’t know when he showed up, but he definitely played like a Power 5 type of guy.”

American Football Zentrum in Innsbruck, Austria is one of the few facilities dedicated to the sport in Europe. Kevin Armstrong | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

IMG Academy and the NFL Academy are competitors, as well as business partners. During the offseason, the NFL’s International Players Pathway program trains on IMG’s campus in Bradenton, Fla.

IMG has plans to play in Japan next spring, and already has planted its flag in Mexico, where several current players hail from. In August, IMG played in Dublin, and the cost of the trip was $250,000. During the Munich trip, IMG’s leadership team visited Innsbruck, Austria, which has twice hosted the Winter Olympics and has a football stadium by the ski lift.

“We have to be the only high school in history to be able to play one international game per semester,” said Kyle Brey, the IMG football director. “Our families want this experience.”

College placement continues. Earlier this month, while academy players were in a meeting, Boston College special teams coordinator Matt Thurin called Quinn via FaceTime. Hagen took the phone and turned it to show the other players.

“You want to say hi to the NFL academy, coach?” Hagen said. “We got about 70 other guys you are going to have to sign in a minute here.”

Beefing Up

Bruno Werner, a 6-foot-9, 255-pound offensive lineman, loads up on hashbrowns to meet weight goals before Christmas. Kevin Armstrong | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

One afternoon in early October, academy players sat among students in the cafeteria. Traditional English fare — beans, bacons and hashbrowns — was available, and many stuffed their trays before paying at the cash register. But one player stood out. He was Bruno Werner, a 6-foot-9, 255-pound left tackle. On his right wrist were bracelets from the colleges he had visited with the academy — North Carolina, Wake Forest — over the summer. He had 18 hash browns on his plate.

“What?” he said to Max Hoke, a 6-foot-8, 355-pound teammate who raised an eyebrow. “I need to put on weight.”

The NFL Academy conducts a battery of tests upon a player’s enrollment. Christopher Baird, director of performance, absorbs data to craft individual development plans. Coaches provide initial feedback, including deficiencies in collision dominance or change of direction. They measure, weigh and test each player before running their profiles against current NFL players. Every Monday, players jump on force plates to quantify balance, gait, and other biomechanical parameters. Every Wednesday, 10-yard accelerations are clocked. Cornerback Timi Oke, who was an elite soccer player, lowered his 40-yard dash from a 4.72 to 4.4 in his year at the academy. He is now at Northwestern.

Foreigners learn where they fit in the game plan. Ryoma Shimoseki, a 6-foot-1, 280-pound defensive lineman, came from Kosei High in Tokyo. “I was the biggest linemen in Japan,” he says. “Here, they are so big. I never experienced. I was so confused when I saw such big guys.” At the academy, he is among offensive linemen who stand 6-foot-9, 255 pounds and a tackle from Finland who is 6-foot-4, 308 pounds. One lineman, Pape Abdoulaye Sy, a 311-pounder from Senegal, played in only one game with the academy before landing a scholarship at Boston College.

“We are the best short-order cooks in the world,” Winston says. “We can serve it up to you, get you a good meal. The more time we get, the better.”

Most NFL Academy players wear Guardian shells over their helmets to limit the number of blows to the head during practices in Loughborough, England. Kevin Armstrong | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

It is all an experiment in player development. During on-field workouts, the majority of players wear Guardian shells now for helmets. Sensors relay where contact is landing on the helmet and the frequency to assist coaches in knowing who needs to work on better tackle efficiency and how they can weigh concussion risks if someone is taking too many hits.

Pound for pound, Yahya Attia, an Arabic-speaking Egyptian whose family moved to Austria when he was a child, may be the best athlete to come through the academy. He played center, guard and tackle. At 6-foot-4, 310 pounds, he liked football because “you can get away with things.” When the linemen competed in punt, pass and kick competitions, Attia often won. Hagen suggested he probably could play quarterback.

“No doubt, coach!” said Attia, who has played guard at Colorado this season. “No doubt, coach!”

To prepare them for summer showcases in the heat of Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama and North Carolina, players run on treadmills in sealed heat chambers with the temperatures that prepare them for the southern humidity and temperature. For a month, intense workouts are done.

“We’ll put them on the bikes and thrash them so when we get there we don’t spend a week climatizing,” Baird says. “They get off the plane and away they go. It saves a load of money.”

They all must move at high speeds. Akram Elnagmi, a 6-foot-6, 297-pound offensive lineman, was first exposed to football when he received a Madden demo as a youth. He grew up playing rugby before pivoting to football, and started searching Youtube for All-22 tapes to understand gaps and leverage. To loosen his hips and increase foot speed, he performs ladder drills and yoga stretches daily.

He is getting close to executing a split, but Londoners can’t tell the difference as he readies to enroll at Pitt next month.

“A lot of guys still think I play rugby,” Elnagmi said. “They see me and say, ‘How is rugby going?’ I tell them I had to change up.”

Little bit crazy

The line to enter the NFL Academy and IMG Academy’s joint combine started forming around 9 o‘clock on the morning after the victory over IMG in Munich. Youth soccer teams occupied the surrounding fields, but two security guards dressed in black from head to toe at the gate checking bags. One tight end flew in from Paris, where the closest field is 40 minutes away via train. A wideout took a four-hour train ride from Zurich. Some were invited by the academy’s coaches via direct messages on social media; others scrolled upon the event on Instagram. Medon Dautaj, 17-year-old defensive lineman and fullback, rode in a mini-van for 370 miles with five friends from Cologne, Germany. He started playing three years ago. He stands 5-11 and 245 pounds.

NFL Academy coach Steve Hagen and league commissioner Roger Goodell spoke on the sideline at a combine in Munich last month. Kevin Armstrong | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

“I had a friend in my school who played,” he says. “He was a little bit crazy. And I am a little bit crazy too, to be honest. I love to hit people – to let it out.”

There are no pads, helmets or collisions today. The three-hour session is composed of cone drills to gauge their athleticism. Two rows of motion sensors line the turf for the 40-yard dash, and coaches hold stopwatches and clipboards. When players run shuttles, they are told to face the camera. Defensive backs and receivers compete one on one.

A wide range of NFL employees stands watch. Commissioner Roger Goodell speaks with former New England Patriots lineman Sebastian Vollmer, who is from Düsseldorf. Pat Long, the league’s head of international player development, stands nearby, as well as Peter O’Reilly, the league’s vice president for international operations. Former Panthers wideout Dante Hall hugs Winston and gets introduced to Seelig, who moves slowly the day after his big performance.

“I wish you could have seen him last night,” Hagen says.

“I heard you balled out!” Hall says as he hugs Seelig.

The aspirants range in age from 15-18 years old, and filled out forms online that included questions about whether they had a criminal conviction, but there is a 23-year-old from Switzerland, as well. It is Schürmann, the academy alumnus who shook at his first tryout. Now, he is trying out as a long snapper for the International Player Pathway. At 13, he happened upon football because his sister was cheerleading for the Basel Gladiators. During his time at the academy, he only experienced intrasquad scrimmages due to covid-19. He continues to play with the Helvetic Mercenaries.

“The moment I stop doing stuff like this, working out on a sh-tty field every now and then, that is when I will know it is unimportant to,” he says. “I just need football.”

Hagen gathers the group at the end to inform them that they will be winnowed down to a select few to be considered.

“Not everyone at the camp is going to have the chance to play at the academy, but that doesn’t mean football should ever stop for you,” he says. “Continue to play the sport, continue to develop your skills. Some of you guys are 15, 16 years old. Keep growing. Some of you are 17, 18, we are going to look at you deeply.”

He asks them to take their jerseys off and stack them by color into piles. The players disperse to their parents on the sideline for rides and flights home to their hometowns and countries. The academy’s cadre is bussing directly to the airport for a flight back to England. By the gate, offensive coordinator Clayton Turner continues a conversation with two receivers from the Hamburg Blue Devils.

“We’ll be in touch,” he says.

NFL Academy coaches clocked teenagers from across Europe as they ran 40-yard dashes at a combine in Munich, Germany last month. Kevin Armstrong | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com