There can’t be too many football teams at grassroots level anywhere across the land who can say they are managed by someone who is a full-time professional in the game.

But that’s one of the proud claims of Generation Next, who are in their first season in the Cheltenham League and have made an impressive start to life in Division Two.

That early success is not really surprising because the team, founded by Ricky Santos, who hails from the Caribbean, are managed by Antoine Thompson, who is also head of the academy at League One Cheltenham Town.

“I’m director of football at Generation Next,” Thompson, who has just turned 35, told The Local Answer. “I manage the club and I also play for them. I play in various positions – number 10, left-back. Because of the level I can get away with different positions.”

Thompson played at a higher level back in the day. Originally from Epsom in Surrey – his family’s roots are in the Caribbean – he was on the books of Woking, one of the top non-League clubs around, when he was younger.

“I played for the reserves for a season and played at some top London clubs like Millwall and QPR, but I didn’t quite make it into the first team,” he said. “But once I realised I wasn’t going to make it as a player I wanted to get into coaching.”

And that’s what brought him to this part of the world, because he studied at Hartpury College before doing a masters at the University of Gloucestershire.

The rest, as they say, is history because through hard work and plenty of talent he rose through the ranks to one of the top jobs at a very well-established Football League club, a position he has held for the past five years.

Along the way he met the aforementioned Ricky Santos, a 62-year-old born in Guyana with homes in Antigua and Gloucestershire, who has a huge passion for football.

And Santos is a man of influence too, because as well as being the driving force behind Generation Next – he is their president – he is also the Ambassador for Sports and Sports Tourism in Antigua and Barbuda, chairman of the board for St Anthony’s Secondary School in Antigua and educational consultant in the Caribbean for Hartpury College.

Thompson and Santos got on well from the get-go – “I did a bit of mentoring for his coaches in the Caribbean,” said Thompson – so when Santos decided to set up Generation Next in Cheltenham it was a no-brainer that he would ask Thompson to front it up.

“He’s a real nice guy,” said Santos. “Obviously we’ve got the Caribbean connection but there’s much more to it than that, he’s very good at what he does.”

And Generation Next is not just a name that is familiar to these parts, as Santos explains.

“I started my first Generation Next team in Antigua in 2012,” he said. “I wanted a team that my son Michael could play in.”

Michael, now 23, isn’t playing football at the moment but he was involved in something at the start that has simply grown and grown.

Santos launched a full youth league in Antigua – there are now 64 teams playing in it from ages seven to 17 – while the name Generation Next is popping up all over the place.

“We’ve got teams in Canada, we’re starting one in Scotland close to Glasgow and we want to set one up in Barcelona,” said Santos, who lives in Kempley, near Dymock, when he is in this country.

And the motivation is simple.

“I want to give Caribbean boys the opportunity to play football in the UK and other countries and enjoy different experiences,” said Santos.

“We give them exposure, they can be seen and hopefully they can go on to play at higher levels.”

It’s a long-term project and around here the tie-up with Hartpury College is very important, of course.

As is the role of Antoine Thompson who, at the time of writing, had five boys from the Caribbean in his Generation Next squad.

“The dream is that one day, one of the boys who comes over can become a full-time professional player,” he said.

“That’s a tough ask at the moment even though they are good players, but you’ve got to start somewhere. We want to give everyone an opportunity.”

Generation Next play their home fixtures at Cheltenham Town’s training ground in Swindon Village and have in the region of 50 players registered.

“We’ve signed a lot of players but we’ve got 12 to 15 regulars,” continued Thompson. “The ambition is promotion, we want to get as high as we can as quickly as we can. We want to get out of the Cheltenham League.”

That’s obviously very important to Santos, too, but he has plenty of other things to ponder because as well as his links with Cheltenham – his wife Sharon is from Gloucestershire – he has tie-ups with the likes of Stoke City, Mansfield Town, Kettering Town and Bolton Wanderers football clubs.

It’s certainly all systems go and it looks like the name Generation Next is here to stay.