Why are strikers from around the football world turning to an Irish finishing school?
Morgan Biggs working with Anastasios ‘Tasos’ Douvikas. Pic via Training121
“To say we’d have a 34-year-old Brazilian striker who plays in Vietnam travel to Ireland for 10 days for one reason only, to train with us… is just insane. Well that’s what Luçao did last week.”
Morgan Biggs doesn’t get many idle moments to take stock. But today brings another landmark for a unique Irish football success story. Still just 26, the coaching company Biggs started at 16 — with his brother Gary and best pal Gary Daly — begins another chapter. A full-time transition year football programme, in conjunction with Ashfield College, the private Dublin school that numbers Gavin Bazunu among its alumni.
We’ll come back to that. But more about Luçao. How and why?
“He found us on Instagram. He described it as a dream to travel over to work with us as he felt he’s never had the striker training he’s needed in his career. He was top scorer in Vietnam last year, so we learned lots of nuggets off him too.”
That’s the way lots of people find the Biggs brothers and Daly, and their Training121 brand. Their social media presence now draws more than 1.3 million followers across the platforms. Every grassroots coach wondering what can be done to get the lad up top with the banjo to hit the barn door has found them. Clips of their specialist finishing training do huge numbers — film of real training sessions with a raft of Irish internationals. More than 100 pros have used Training121 for off-season sharpening, the likes of Andrew Omobamidele, Jessie Stapleton, Chloe Mustaki, Sinclair Armstrong, Killian Phillips and Jamie McGrath.
The Greek international striker Anastasios ‘Tasos’ Douvikas was clicking around, looking for something different to give him an edge, and found the lads. Tasos was top scorer in the Eredivisie in 2023 when playing for Utrecht. That took him to Celta Vigo for €12 million and onto Serie A to Cesc Fabregas’ Como, who paid €13 million.
Despite all the resources at Europe’s big football clubs, Tasos felt he could be doing more. So his people reached out and last summer, the Biggs brothers and Daly flew out to Tasos’ home town of Nafplio for six days of specialist work. And they filmed it all. It’s an entertaining and educational mini-series. Tasos is joined by two underage Greek internationals, Zaxos of Panathinaikos and Antonis from AEK Athens. There's a bag of balls, a few cones on a local pitch and just hard work in the Greek heat. A bit of awkwardness early on as the Irish lads navigate the language barrier and Tasos looks a bit self-conscious after shanking one or two in the shooting drills. But it loosens up every day and by the time the party disperses, everyone is best pals and Tasos is finding the corners.
“Yeah, as always, when we work with a player for the first time, it's very much rapport building. That's half the battle. They need to trust what you're saying. They need to trust you. And we're very transparent. We don't say we have all the answers. It's very conversation-based as opposed to transactional. It's not just you paying me and I’ll give you the info, you take it on. It’s a conversation and I suppose that's what coaching is.
“But it was a brilliant week. At the start there was a language barrier. There's an element of risk, I suppose. They’ve paid for us to go over. It's like, is this going to be beneficial? And I'm taking a week out of my off-season to do this, which is our busiest time.
“But it was great. We always try to emphasise strengths as opposed to negating issues that they might have. For him, he's a centre forward, maybe, who isn't the prettiest to watch. His first touch is a little bit different to how other players would receive. But he gets himself between the posts. So we need to make him an absolute killer in between the posts. That's essentially our main goal with him. And it's just the case of moulding your conversation, moulding your coaching points, depending on the player that you're working with.
“You saw a lot of work we would have done with him is back to goal and his ability to pin, and obviously his perception — scanning is a non-negotiable we work on with everybody.
“When he was watching our stuff, he could see that we don't talk about a million and one things. We talk about two or three things and we're experts on them. This is our offering and we’re going to nail it.
“And I think as soon as we got out on the pitch, we know our quality, we know the value that we're going to bring. It was almost like this is just another day. We're just in a different country, they understand exactly what we're trying to get across here.”
A plan is already in place to return to Greece next summer and work with a host of other players.
For the past few months, Morgan and his brother have been back and forth to one of Africa’s biggest clubs, working with a group of forwards who will be heading to this month’s African Cup of Nations.
“Their chairman had been watching us for a long time. They essentially wanted a European type of insight. The two key things they really wanted to focus on was finishing, because it was erratic, and building their perception. So scanning work. We’ve been over three times for individual work and group work and we watch every single minute of their games and get in touch with their analysts on a consistent basis.”
Morgan’s eye for detail is precise. There’s a super session on YouTube with Ireland U19 winger Ike Orazi, now at Stade de Reims. They just work on two finishes, first the inverted winger’s bread and butter, cut inside and bend in the far corner. The lad is spraying them everywhere until Morgan adjusts his hips ever so slightly. And the beauty of working with high-level players is they can instantly take on that kind of information. Improvement is instant.
I’m a touch baffled at why pros are ready to expose themselves in this way, and perhaps reveal a weakness or two. But then it’s probably the generation gap forgetting that everyone under 25 is constantly on camera anyway.
Morgan laughs. “Yes, from working with a lot of players, they don't give a rats about it. They have very much grown up with it. They understand it, they understand us. They also know that if they go, right, I don't want anything to be recorded, we will never question a single word. At the end of the day, they are there to train. We've had plenty of players who come in that we've never broadcast. Maybe they’re at a stage in their career where they are apprehensive; that’s no problem. But the vast majority have no concerns. They do not care. Most of them actually like it, to be quite honest, as they get to rewatch themselves. And don’t forget, they're also pro footballers so they’re extremely vain.”
Where did this knack come from? When he started Training121 — in transition year, as it happens — Morgan was a good level player in the south Dublin emerging talent system. By 18, he knew playing wasn’t the path for him and was immersed in coaching. Yet he had no interest in tactics.
“The other two lads have coached teams, but my interest was all around the technical aspects of the game. When I'm watching a game, I'm not watching the tactical side. That's not what I enjoy. I'm watching the very micro details because that's just what I've grown up loving as a player.”
The trio started out offering their services around their hometown of Maynooth for free.
“It was just building up our coaching experience. One of the first, I suppose, higher-profile players was Paddy Kirk when he was at Bohemians. He wanted to do some off-season work. We knew his brother. So myself and Gary Daly bussed it out to Raheny. Neither of us drove. We went down with one bag, a few cones, a football. It was very start-up.”
Now, as well as the work with pros, and the media empire, Training121 coaches more than 3,000 Irish kids — aged five to 18 — at five venues around Dublin, Kildare and Louth, with more opening in 2026. They employ 16 part-time coaches.
“From 2020 onwards, honestly, it's just been all guns blazing all day, every day. All of us lock in. It has been fun. Doing it all with the two people closest to me is a privilege and it is not one I take for granted.”
A transition year programme is a venture they’d considered before, with several popping up around the country in recent years.
“The idea is a full-time football environment. We flirted with it for a while, but we were never comfortable with taking kids out of school and not giving them proper education, because it's so easy to sell parents and kids on the idea of full-time football, that they’re going to be a full-time athlete, and pretty much neglect everything else. We don't think that's the right way at all.
“It was just perfect timing that Ashfield College, who are massive in the private education space, approached us first to essentially front the football curriculum for the programme. So it's the perfect mix of two market leaders coming together to form the perfect transition year programme.”
Back with the pros, Morgan knows there are plenty of coaches wary of the ‘supplemental coaching’ industry, who don’t want anybody else meddling with their players. But he insists there should always be room for an I in team.
“A lot of players struggle, including some Irish players who make that jump over to England. They’re professional footballers, so they're expected to just know what they need to do, but a lot of them haven't got the toolkit to cope from a mentality point of view, and from a technical point of view as well. A coach might just tell them, right, you're not scanning enough. But a player might not know when or where they should scan, what body shape should I be picking up? It's just like an expected outcome, that the player should have.
“We worked with internationals with over 100 appearances at senior level and you do a little bit of scanning work with them in isolation and they are terrible. They have no understanding of it. But put them in a game where they need a dog to win you the game, no problem. They'll get that done because that's what they've grown up doing.
“But if you just add these microcentages into these prayers from a young age or even just improve them in the tiny facets of time that you have them, the difference is huge.”
Could he take any striker in the world and improve them? No hesitation. “Yeah, yeah.”
Even Haaland?
“Well, Haaland’s a freak. We would learn much more off Haaland than he’d learn off us. What could you add in terms of value to a guy like that? An absolute outlier of freaking nature. But I'd have no problem working with the likes of him. You’d probably think, ‘Jesus, it'll be a tall order’. But we go into all these sessions with a very open mind. I'm curious to see how this guy trains, how he operates, what's his communication like? And then when you actually get going, there's probably one or two very, very micro things that could be improved, even for these players who are top, top level.
“And again, a lot of players know the details. They might just need the repetition, someone to provide good repetition, realistic scenarios for them to train in.
“And as odd as this sounds, they might just need someone to love them for an hour. This is your session. We're just going to fuel you. We're not going to give you false hope or say things that we don't believe in. But the player just might need a little bit of personal attention and a lot of players don't get that. In a team setting where you're God one week and then you're down in the dumps being killed by fans on Twitter the next week, some of the players just need a little bit of love.
“We see that a lot, especially with the pro players, especially with the players in and around Championship, League 1, it's so ruthless. It's so, so ruthless that some of them just need some tender love and care for an hour. And they build that internal confidence again. It's incredible what it can do.”
The three friends love both sides of the job, whether it's gently seeding some microdetails in six-year-olds using fun and games. Or welcoming the likes of Luçao, 34, who has travelled 10,000 miles for 10 days of tender love and care. And who says on his Insta bio, “It’s never too late to be great.”
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