Gavin Levey says the time was right to leave his role as Aberdeen Youth Academy director – and he has “loved every minute” with the club.
Having joined the Dons in 2006 as a community coach before being appointed head of academy coaching and then academy director in 2021, Levey will soon start work in a similar role heading up Swansea City’s development arm.
The Reds, who thanked Levey for his “immeasurable contributions” following his exit last weekend, are hopeful they will find a replacement of Levey’s calibre, with Stuart Glennie – who was formerly in charge of the SFA performance school at Hazlehead Academy – stepping up from head of academy coaching, Levey’s old role, to lead Aberdeen’s youth department in the interim.
Reflecting on his near-two decades with the Dons, Levey told The Press and Journal: “I’ve been very, very fortunate in my career at Aberdeen that I’ve been able to get up for work every day and look forward to putting on the tracksuit.
“When people ask you how long you’ve been at Aberdeen, and you say 17 years, you get a stunned reaction, as it’s such a long time.
“I was probably at a stage where I felt my career had progressed to a level that I needed a new challenge, and when this opportunity at Swansea presented itself, it’s one that felt right for me.”
Swansea ply their trade in the Championship at present, but spent seven seasons among the mega finances of the Premier League from 2011-2018.
Unlike Aberdeen’s one-site operation at Cormack Park, in his new role, Levey will be working between the Welsh outfit’s two training grounds – one used by the Swans’ first-team, under-23s and U21s, and another for their younger age groups.
He will have overarching responsibility for all of the teams beneath the senior side, including their Premier Development League team.
It is an opportunity to “be challenged at a different level”, Levey added, further explaining his decision to depart the Reds.
Rise of under-11s protege McKenna ‘sticks out’ as source of pride for Levey
Levey understandably found it difficult to narrow down the achievements he is most proud of from his 17 years at Aberdeen – and was quick to emphasise everything he has achieved with the Dons’ youth academy came via the collective efforts of staff and players.
He singled out his role in helping centre-back Scott McKenna not only break through at Aberdeen but go on to become a multi-million-pound player, turning out for Nottingham Forest in the English Premier League and starring regularly for Scotland.
Levey said: “He was in the first-ever team I coached at Aberdeen, U11s moving to U12s.
“And the fact that me and Scott are still very close now means that he sticks out quite a lot.”
However, though McKenna’s rise has been exciting for Levey, it brings him just as much pride to see youngsters he has coached go on to other kinds of success, like US college scholarships or in employment.
To Levey, “development” coaching is not just about developing footballers, but helping develop rounded people – whether it has been the “unbelievable”, “creative” and “resourceful” coaches and staff working under him, or the youngsters in their care.
Youth Academy’s ‘really, really tough’ Balgownie era was ‘special’, Levey says
Levey worked for Aberdeen for a long enough period to have started taking youth team sessions in an era where they were still held – among other venues – at the city’s Seaton Park. Without goalposts and with other park users having barbecues on the pitches during training.
He looks back with fondness on the period where the academy were based at Balgownie playing fields – the pitches where many of the recent youth academy graduates to reach the Dons first-team were forged.
Levey said: “Having to build goals, having to have parents make cups of tea, having to take superglue out of the padlocks and deal with leaking toilets… By the time you’d kicked off a game at Balgownie on a weekend, you’d already done a day’s work.
“But that environment we created when times were really, really tough was special.
“I look back on those as my fondest years, to be honest.”
Levey thinks the difficulties of this period created a “special bond” between the academy’s teams and players – from the likes of McKenna through to other eventual first-team players like Calvin Ramsay (now at Liverpool), Connor Barron and Jack MacKenzie.
In 2019, the youth academy, along with the senior side, moved to Cormack Park – Aberdeen’s long-awaited, bespoke training base.
Young team tournament wins: ‘Really nice’ victory in memory of ‘wisdom’-sharer Craig Brown to finish
In recent years, the progression of Aberdeen’s youth teams at tournaments overseas has been another source of great pride to Levey
With the young Dons now taking on and regularly beating some of Europe’s biggest names, Levey said: “From finishing seventh at our first kind of big tournament in Holland at U12s a good number of years ago to now… This year was incredible, because I knew I was leaving at this point, but hadn’t said anything.
“To witness our U14s win the Gravenzande tournament was unbelievable.
“To be honest, it was almost the icing on the cake – apart from the Craig Brown Memorial Trophy, which was another really nice way to finish.”
The Aberdeen U14s winning the tournament in tribute to former Reds and Scotland boss Brown, held at Cormack Park recently following his death earlier this year, was poignant for Levey, given the strength of his relationship with the revered and famously conversational gaffer during his time at the club.
What a way to finish the weekend!
The Craig Brown Memorial Trophy was a huge success. This was never in doubt with the staff that we had hosting the first ever tournament at Cormack Park.
The young @AberdeenFC side winning it was an absolute bonus! pic.twitter.com/An2zXip9EL
— Gavin Levey (@GavLevey) October 15, 2023
Levey said: “Craig Brown’s way and how he came in and shared his wisdom with us over time was something I’ll always remember.
“He never nipped in for five minutes. It was always an hour.”
Levey feels he also had a strong working relationship with Brown’s successor Derek McInnes (who took the academy boss out to a first-team winter camp in Dubai), as well as Stephen Glass, Jim Goodwin and, of course, U18s-boss-now-turned-first-team-manager Barry Robson.
Levey: Several youngsters names in frame to be Aberdeen’s next big thing
Though he has now departed Aberdeen, given the length of his service to the Dons – which included managing the women’s team in second half of last term – Levey’s work will reverberate through the corridors of Cormack Park and Pittodrie for seasons to come.
In fact, several players whose development he has helped oversee will almost certainly be walking out of the Main Stand tunnel as regular men’s first-team starters in the years ahead.
Asked who he thinks, of the current crop of Aberdeen starlets, might be the next big thing, Levey, with his expert eye, thinks players picked for Scotland’s age-group squads is often a semi-reliable gauge of their future prospects.
There are already Scotland U21 players like “top talent” central midfielder Barron and attacker Ryan Duncan racking up first-team minutes. Both have excited the Red Army with some of their performances, Barron especially.
Behind them?
“You’ve got Alfie Bavidge in there, Findlay Marshall’s really close. These boys have been on the fringes (of the Dons first team),” Levey said.
“I watched our (young) boys against Fraserburgh last week. Dylan Lobban just looks so comfortable out there. Alfie Stewart came on and took his goal.
“Adam Emslie’s doing well at Formartine (United).
“Jack Milne’s not had a lot of game time this year. But he’s got great stature, and is a great boy with his feet on the ground.
“And there’s more and more coming through the under-18s.”
However, as well as the individual players already starting to break through, Levey thinks Aberdeen’s big strength as a club is talent is coming through from the academy to the first-team with consistency.
Youth players will blossom into first-team regulars. Maybe they will leave. And, after 17 years, academy directors might leave, too – but the conveyor belt must not stop.
Levey added: “With football clubs, too many people talk about the present. With youth academies, you think about the future.
“My question to everyone was always: ‘Who is the most valuable player at this football club?’
“Naturally, someone will always pick someone in the first team that has a price tag.
“But your most valuable player could be an under-11 or 12 player who needs nurtured and developed.”
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/sport/football/aberdeen-fc/6229690/ex-aberdeen-academy-chief-gavin-levey-reveals-barry-robsons-im-ready-pledge-before-last-seasons-phenonemal-interim-spell/
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