Young players in action during the Aspire Academy Tri-Series football tournament.
DOHA: Last week, Aspire Academy concluded the final round of the year-long Tri-Series football tournament for the 2017/2018 season, culminating in a year of global competitions that saw participation from more than 1,200 of the best footballers from across Asia, Africa, Europe and South America.
The final round saw the Academy’s football teams face visitors from the U-14 and U-16 Tunisian and Iranian national youth teams in the same age-groups.
Commenting on the conclusion of this year’s season, Edorta Murua, Technical Football Director at Aspire Academy, said: “Aspire Academy’s main goal from this tournament is the long-term development of its individual football players. Playing is, of course, the most important learning approach for our players and we try to give them as much playing time as possible.”
The football programme of Aspire Academy is recognised as one of the strongest in the world in terms of detection and selection of talent, as well as training, competition and evaluation of each player. The nurturing of players starts years before they reach the age to join the Academy as high school student-athletes.
Aspire Academy has installed “Football Skills Development Centres” (FSDC) throughout Doha for boys between 6 and 11 years of age. From the age of 8 years the most promising boys are identified to join the “Aspire Feeder Groups” in which they are prepared to join the Academy.
The training philosophy of the Academy is tailored to the capabilities, talents and goals of Qatar as a footballing nation and follows a strategy that is geared towards the development of the individual player, who should be able to know what the game demands in any given situation.
Speaking about the selection criteria for visiting teams that travel to Doha to take part, Stephan Hildebrandt, Manager of Football Operations at Aspire Academy, said: “Our objective it to provide our student-athletes with a competitive environment which lets us test out different types of playing styles, so each week, we look to bring one team from each continent.”
This year’s competitions saw participation of local, regional and international clubs from African, European, Asian and South American countries. Some of these include Tunisian national youth team players, as well as football cub Etoile Sportive du Sahel, Spanish club Celta de Vigo, Aspire-owned Cultural y Deportiva Leonesa, Dutch club AZ Alkmaar, German club Eintracht Frankfurt, English club Leeds United FC, Abuel Cyprus, Greek club Apoel FC. Ecuadorian club CSD. Independiente del Valle, Pakistani club Karachi United as well as Japanese clubs Ventforet Kofu and Shonan Bellmare.
The tournament also welcomed national team players across various age-groups from Tunisia, Malaysia, Lebanon and Iran.
