07 Jan 2020
Doha, 7 January 2020. In course of their current training camp in Doha, a delegation of Dutch football giant AFC Ajax led by CEO Edwin van der Sar visited Aspire Academy on Tuesday afternoon. In the following interview, the former world-class goalkeeper talks about the special connection between Aspire and his club and how both entities can benefit from each other in the future.
Edwin, it’s always a pleasure to welcome you at Aspire Academy. You have been coming here since 2011, first as a player, later as football executive. Have you noticed any changes at Aspire over the years?
Edwin van der Sar: First, I want to thank Aspire Academy for the hospitality over all these years. Obviously a lot has changed since I have been here the first time as a player of Manchester United in 2011. This is the first time I have seen the expansion of the Academy, the Football Performance Center, and I was really impressed. This takes performance another step forward and not just for football in Qatar, but also for European top clubs.
With this you are to a certain extent also referring to the “Aspire in the World Fellows” - a community, that Aspire Academy started in 2014 involving the world’s best federations and clubs in terms of youth training methodology, including Ajax, with the goal to share knowledge. There are even more ties between Ajax and Aspire as Johan Cruijff ArenA hosted the 2016 edition of the “Aspire Academy Global Summit” or winter training camps of Ajax at Aspire. How do you see the future of this relationship?
I think it’s important for both sides. For Ajax it’s important to see what happens in other parts of the world when it comes to youth development and youth training methodology. We can definitely learn something from the environment Aspire has created here and, on the other hand, Aspire Academy can also learn from our superior methods to train young children. Unlike Aspire, we also have girls in our Academy and the kids can combine school and sport like they can do it here at Aspire. The only thing that we don’t have yet is a dormitory, so the players are not able to stay over night like they can here.
One thing, Aspire and Ajax share is the ambition to enable young players to reach the top level and to make it as professional players.
That’s true. Developing young players is part of our DNA. Ajax is a big club, but, of course, at a certain point, players go abroad. But we believe in our structure to develop players that make it from the youth department up to the club’s first team. That’s something that we are really good at and I think we emphasize on the development of young players the same way as Aspire does it in Qatar. Like us, they are trying to get the mind of the young players right, they keep working on the technical, tactical and physical skills that they acquire over the years. If you are a young player and if you are able to train in this kind of environment, you have the best foundation to be able to one day perform at the highest level.