The training of Thomas Frank and the early years at Brøndby

One of football's feel-good stories of recent years has been the success of former minnow Brentford and Danish head coach Thomas Franc. Since being promoted from assistant manager to the hot seat in 2018, Frank has taken Brentford to new heights, and the capital side are currently punching well above their weight class in the middle of the Premier League.

Frank himself is already linked with bigger jobs, including Arsenal, and with his leadership style based on a close relationship with his players and a focus on developing youngsters and stars previously underserved. performers, he is an incredibly likable character who has become popular among football fans around the world.

However, before Frank moved to London in 2016 to join the coaching staff at Brentford, he rarely looked like he would qualify for the biggest league in the world. In fact, failure was the word most associated with his career after a disastrous spell at Danish giants Brøndby.

Thomas Frank joined the Yellow-Blues as head coach in the summer of 2013 amid a tumultuous time at the club. The job was his first as boss of a senior team, having previously coached youth teams. He did, however, enjoy success at under-16, 17 and 19 level with the national team.

During the 2012/13 season, Brøndby only avoided relegation in the last round of matches and was saved from bankruptcy in the eleventh hour when new owners came into the club.

That meant the club had to rebuild from scratch. Unable to compete financially with FC København, the previously successful youth department was to pave the long road to the top of Danish football. With his experience as a youth coach and his close relationship with several of the young players, including Riza Durmisi, Frank was seen as the ideal candidate for the job.

In the years before Frank joined the club, Brøndby had lost several promising talents to foreign clubs before they even made it into the first team. Andreas Christensen joined Chelsea, Pierre-Emile Højberg went to Bayern Munich, Patrick Olsen headed to Inter, Markus Bay and Nicolai Boilesen crossed paths with Ajax and Jannik Vestergaard joined Hoffenheim. It was a trend the board and Frank intended to break.

The youngsters had to go all the way to the first team, partly to allow Brøndby to take advantage of their best talents but also to ensure maximum profit from their inevitable sales.

And it wasn't just Brøndby's empty words. Halfway through Frank's first season, they launched a new, more ambitious academy under the name Brøndby Masterclass. Millions of crowns were invested and the club recruited new foreign coaches to raise the staff and knowledge base. The best example of this is the appointment of Albert Capellas, Barcelona's former La Masia coordinator, as Frank's assistant coach, and ideological cornerstone for building the Masterclass.

Although ambitious, Brøndby's new board has been patient. Having learned from the mistakes of the past, where expensive and poorly performing signings, as well as frequent managerial changes, caused inconsistencies, Frank received unprecedented levels of confidence.

"It's over [managerial changes] now. Development is our focus and that's what we're watching," chairman Aldo Petersen said shortly after Frank joined the club. there won't be any changes just because our strategy isn't going the way we hoped."

Petersen even guaranteed that Frank would not lose his job if the results were disappointing while he was president, and explained that he was ready to be relegated to the second tier with Frank if he felt they were still moving forward with the long-term strategy.

Confidence was essential as Brøndby didn't get the start to the season he wanted. Seven games into the Superliga campaign they were still winless and knocked out of the cup by a semi-professional team.