AS coach and owner of Constant Spring Football Club, Danny Lyn has won it all — well, almost all.

He guided Constant Spring FC to multiple Major League and an A League championships titles, spending about a decade in the National Premier League where he reached four semi-finals and one final.

Lyn also made Constant Spring the inaugural winners of the Jackie Bell knockout in 1987-88, the same season they won the KSAFA Major League to enter the Premier League for the first time in 1988-89.

Retired from coaching and now 70 years old, Lyn wants to build a football academy and sports bar on the five-acre club property before he breathes his last. He expects Constant Spring to return to the Premier League next season after an absence of 13 years.

The proprietor of a meat shop and the 13th of 16 children from his Chinese immigrant father, who was born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, Lyn was approached by community leaders in Constant Spring to take over the football team in the early 1980s.

A St George’s College old boy, Lyn was born in Rae Town and he lived on Fleet Street. His love and expertise of the beautiful game was well known. He was the teacher.

Lyn began his journey with Constant Spring in 1983, setting targets early such as how many goals his team would score in his first season in charge. Then they were playing in the Syd Bartlett competition.

In short order, Constant Spring moved up to the Major League where Lyn’s philosophy of buttressing the team around a few select players was taking shape.

He has always subscribed to an attractive brand of football, insisting that matches must be entertaining and spectator-friendly and that players must be students of the game.

Lyn stresses the importance of building and “not buying” a cadre of young players and to instil in them a sense of professionalism. He reminds them that they are “playing football to be paid”.

For this reason Lyn wants the academy to become a reality in 2020.

“I am thinking of kids with natural talents, with Maths, English and IT (information technology) as core subjects,” he explained.

He wants, initially, 15 quality players spending two years at the academy then further their schooling abroad or securing contracts.

“We need to develop a culture of football and a passion for the game,” he explained, in line with comments of former Reggae Boy Ricardo Fuller, who sought to shed light on the reasons Jamaicans were not getting regular contracts in Europe.

Lyn will also share his experience of his days as coach of Constant Spring at the academy.

In his heydays as coach, Lyn adopted a strategy of playing the team around “four or five front players, leading a group of 16-year-olds who are taught the game”.

That was the ideal, as the Under-15 team was his feeder programme. He was averse to buying young players, preferring to develop those already in the club.

Constant Spring won the KSAFA Major League in 1987/88, 1990/91, and 1992/93. They reached the final of the Premier League in 1994/95, losing to Reno FC 1-3 on aggregate. And they remained in the Premier League until 2005/06 when they bowed out in the semi-final.

Constant Spring won the only edition of the National A League in 1999/2000.

Meanwhile, the sports bar will be located on the roof of the football club and will also be completed in a couple years.

Lyn has bemoaned the “hustler mentality” of professional football players nowadays and argues that several clubs in the same geographical area should think about joining together, pooling resources, to drive the beautiful game forward.