Most aspiring athletes begin their careers on the pitch, track, field, tennis court or swimming pool, depending on the sport. But for one young Londoner, it all began with a chance encounter.
“I was in a furniture store in Orpington, south London, and the defensive line coach at the time came up to me,” said Nana Agyemang.
“He liked my figure and thought I had the potential for the sport.”
The sport was American football, something Agyemang had never played before.
The coach came from the Loughborough-based NFL Academy, which seeks out talent from across Europe and Africa to produce a generation of NFL stars outside of North America.
“At that time, I was too young to apply to the academy, so he gave my mother his card and at 16 I came to the academy, applied for the exams and was accepted through that,” he said.
Agyemang, now 18, is in his final year at the academy and has established himself as a defensive player.
He has grown to 1.93 m tall and now weighs 107 kg instead of 84 kg. He hopes to increase his weight to 113-117 kg.
If all goes according to plan, the next step in his journey will be to get a place at a college or university in the United States next year.
After that, the best players are eligible for a spot in the NFL Draft and the chance to join one of the biggest franchises in the country.
“Football is football. As long as I play, I am pursuing my dream,” he said.
“The call from Rees and Zammit was an aha moment for me”
Another way the NFL recruits UK-based players is through its International Player Pathway (IPP) program, which is aimed at older players seeking a career change.
Former Welsh rugby union international Louis Rees-Zammit has recently become the most famous name to achieve this feat. This year he joins Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce in the ranks of the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs.
And Rees-Zammit, who has 32 caps for Wales, played a key role in convincing 18-year-old Rafael Blakstad to pursue a career in American football.
Blakstad started playing rugby four years ago and was a member of the London Irish Academy before joining the Saracens Academy, but he was unsure about giving up his rugby ambitions to pursue his future in American football.
When NFL Academy coach Steve Hegan asked him one evening if he was available for a phone call, he was surprised to find Rees-Zammit on the other end.
“I was absolutely speechless because he is one of my biggest idols,” said Blakstad, from Willesden Green in London.
“He said that if he were my age and had the opportunity to play American football, he would have stopped immediately at my age, even if he had known that he would eventually achieve everything he had achieved in rugby.
“This point really stuck with me. If this person I idolize says that, why shouldn’t I do it?
“It was an incredible call and the moment when I realized I wanted to pursue this.”
This year, 72 players from 19 different countries and territories are involved in the academy.
Currently, 19 graduates of the academy play football in the top leagues at US colleges.
Former rugby player Travis Clayton was drafted by the Buffalo Bills in April after spending time in the NFL academy and later joining the IPP program.
A second academy is scheduled to open on the Gold Coast in Australia in September.
The academy players are aware that they have a lot of catching up to do compared to others who started playing the sport much earlier in the United States.
But players who attend the academy from the age of 16 and then move to the USA could have up to seven years of playing experience by the end of their college studies.
Head coach Hagen, who previously coached for the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets, said the facilities in UK are improving.
“America is the home of American football and they will do it the way it should be done, but we are still learning,” he said at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after the academy’s first training session of the season.
