In the late nineties, playing football at a semi-PRO level, a young Kevin Thelwell FA and UEFA coaching badges began to clean up with his diploma in sports sciences.
At that moment playing on Muck Heaps and for two men and a dog, there was no saying where the journey could bring him, as somewhere.
But he knew that a career in football was something he wanted to pursue. Before he even turned 30, Thelwell started to take a number of important steps forward.
In 1998 a new role with the Welsh FA saw him supervising the delivery of coaching courses and for the next seven years he cut his teeth into professional football.
In the summer of 2005, Billy Davies Thelwell stopped to become the new head of the youth in Preston North End.
Davies clearly impressed what he had seen brought Thelwell to Derby County just a year later.
Still only 32 years old at that time, Thelwell became the youngest academy manager in the English football when he took the role in Pride Park. But it was when he came to Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2009 that his career was really starting to rise.
All in all, he spent 11 years with wolves, experienced many highlights and lows before he leaves for a new challenge to join New York Red Bulls in 2020.
After two years in the Big Apple, Thelwell was hungry for a new bite in the Premier League and returned as the new sports director of Everton in 2022.
His three years in Goodson Park was pocked by all kinds of financial limitations that had presented his time in the club, and last month it was announced that Thelwell should leave at the end of the season.
Who now all looks that it will take him to a new chapter in Glasgow with Rangers. Rangers wanted to name Thelwell a new sports director as the man they wanted.
The 51-year-old Englishman has already been and had the tour through Ibrox and the training facility of the club in Auchenhowie.
And now Thelwell will soon dust the club suit, straighten its tie and polish a few of the famous brown Brogues.
But what can Rangers expect fans if, as expected, he gets the task of reforming and restructuring the entire football department?
Well, one thing is certain. Given the depth of the experience he has in the role of sports director, Thelwell has proven that he is more than able to work in difficult circumstances.
In the beginning of his time at Wolves, the club suffered a double relegation, which dropped to League One in an instant of the Premier League.
In terms of a rebuilding, that was a fairly important operation. Thelwell started as an academy manager at Molineux, then head of football development and recruitment, before he became a sports director.
He worked on his different roles with managers such as Mick McCarthy, Kenny Jackett, Paul Lambert and Nuno EspÃrito Santo.
It was under Nuno where it really started to rise, with the club that won promotion back to the Premier League in 2018 before he again settled as a fixture in the top flight.
It was the inflow of Portuguese players around this time who turned out to be the key to many of what Wolves did among their Chinese owners. The influence of 'super-agent' Jorge Mendes, whose customers are Jose Mourinho and Cristiano Ronaldo, was something that Thelwell had to manage.
But it was at Wolves where his work in the academy really started to shine – and a focus on the development of youth is something that remains an important part of his philosophy.
Thelwell said last year with the VSI Executive Education Podcast: 'The playing style is driving through the club and to the academy? Yes, we try to do that.
'To quote Ashworth when he worked at the FA, the only thing that changes must be the size of the shirt.
'The clearer we are in terms of how we want the game to be played, the clearer the players are, the easier it should make for those players to go through the age groups and through this pipeline.
'The Academy is definitely an important part of the strategy. In my opinion it should be an important part of the strategy of every football club.
“I am a big proponent because I came through this route, I started as an Academy Manager, so I am a strong supporter of giving young people, young players, opportunities.”
In the past decade, Red Bull has built one of the most well -run football emperes on the planet. Built on data and innovative reconnaissance methods, that approach left a lasting impact on Thelwell after he worked as New York Red Bulls head of Sport for two years.
About the influence of data in football, he said: 'I was really lucky that I went to New York and had that experience, especially with the Red Bull Group.
'They are very strong in Red Bull around data, but also in the United States, where they have a strong data perspective.
'I had two and a-bit years very closely at work with data and saw how that not only affected New York, but also how it had an impact on the group.
'When we come to Everton, we have regular assessments and conversations about what the data tells us. If we have a performance problem, we don't let the gut instinct go.
“Let us have a broader conversation around it, and in general it is best to first go to the Insights team, to communicate with them what we think is the implementation problem and help them to help us make better informed decisions.”
After the problems that Thelwell was confronted with Wolves after the double relegation, Life at Everton has not really been much easier.
The club has been plagued in recent years by financial fair play issues due to reckless expenses that have again dated his time on Merseyside.
Everton was hit last season with a deduction of eight points. It was only due to the work of Thelwell and manager Sean Dyche that they succeeded in preventing relegation.
“Dyche and Thelwell both earned a lot of praise for keeping Everton high,” says a source of Mail Sport.
'They constantly fought the moisture and in principle operated with one hand behind their backs bound because of all financial limitations.
'If you ask most Evertonians, I think that most of them would probably say that, all in all, Thelwell has done very decently in the last three years.
'The wage account and the net spending were horrible when he entered, but he worked through it. Regarding his signing sessions, there have been more hits than misses. Recruitment has steadily improved in recent years.
'Last summer they signed Iliman Ndiaye and Jake O'Brien from clubs in France. Both have proved good signing sessions for not huge money.
'Thelwell knows the kind of markets in which he can shop and, crucial, where he should look. Whether it is him or the scouts with whom he works, there is an eye for a player.
'Everton also did well brilliant to hold Jarrad Branthwaite last summer when Manchester United came in with big offers. Thelwell did well at all that. '
Working with a fixed budget will be an important part of the assignment at Rangers, although there is probably increased financing available if and when the proposed takeover continues.
About the problems he was confronted with in Everton, Thelwell added: 'I am not the biggest mathematician in the world, I am not so brilliant on that side of things.
'But the reality is that you cannot spend more than you earn. So bringing us back to a kind of financial balance and applying that common sense is a large part of the work.
'That is the same for sporting directors around the world. So the two major rocks within my assignment are financial balance and then start building something in which people can believe on the field. '
If and when Thelwell starts at Rangers, the only way to step out of Abjecte is failing.
To work with Everton with a hand occasionally behind his back, he is no stranger to a challenge.
But reviving the fortunes of Rangers looks like it could be his biggest challenge so far. The man who built his reputation at Wolves now has the task of waking the bears again.