16 Jan 2020
Doha, 16 January 2020. Three years before the first ball is kicked at the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar, the country has established itself as a leading destination for international football stars. A major reason for the success is the incredible facilities and know-how that Aspire Academy offers top clubs that choose Doha for their winter training camps. In early 2020, some of Europe’s elite visited the country for this reason and provided the student-athletes of Aspire Academy with the unique opportunity to shadow some of the world’s best players.
“Having some of the world’s best teams here every year is a big asset for our boys. Over the past few years, they had the opportunity to see how serious stars like Neymar, Ibrahimovic or Neuer take their job and how they put in a hundred percent in every training session. We are happy about this opportunity and we highly appreciate it if some of the visiting teams take the time to share some their experience with our student-athletes,” Edorta Murua, Technical Football Director of Aspire Academy, explains the educational benefit of the Elite Training Camps.
German champions FC Bayern Munich returned to Doha in January 2020 for a week-long winter training camp looking to make the most of their time at Aspire in readiness for the second half of their Bundesliga-season. Head Coach Hansi Flick described their 10th training camp in Qatar as a huge success. “We are very satisfied," the 54-year-old told media. In addition to the "top conditions" on the Aspire Academy grounds, Flick found words of praise for his players in particular: "The intensity was very, very high right till the end. The whole team "approached the training camp in a very focused way", even though the programme was "pretty tough.”
In absence of top striker Robert Lewandowski, the team’s squad in Doha featured at lot of young players that made their mark in the team over the last few months. Young players that are also a big inspiration for the hundreds of Aspire Academy-players training on the pitches next to Alaba, Kimmich or Boateng. “Seeing players like them every year is just great. They are stars, but they are still very friendly when we run into them. The intensity they show on the pitch is something that needs a lot of training and passion and that’s a great motivation for me to work hard every day, so I can one day become a role model for young players like them,” said Saeed Afifa, who is a player of Aspire Academy’s Football Programm.
Besides watches the players of teams such as FC Bayern Munich, Club Brugge, KAS Eupen or PSV Eindhoven from the stands during training sessions or in friendlies, Afifa and five of his teammates even had the opportunity to compare their skills with two of PSV Eindhoven’s top players. They faced former Dutch international and 2010-11 UEFA Champions League-winner with FC Barcelona, Ibrahim Affelay, and 17-year-old Mohamed Amine Ihattaren, a star on the rise, in a crossbar challenge.
“It’s always great to share experiences with young players and these boys are really talented,” Affelay praised the skills of Afifa and his teammates. “I remember with PSV at the Al Kass International Cup at Aspire Academy in 2017,” Ihattaren told the boys. “I was impressed of this place back them and I am even more impressed coming back with the first team. The tournament was a great experience for me, as I was very young at the time and competing in such a great environment was huge for me.”
Maybe it was as an impressive experience as it was for young Aspire Academy-student athlete Ali Al Qahtani, who was one of the two Qatari players hitting the crossbar and securing his team a 2-0 win over the Dutch stars. “It’s been great,” Al Qahtani said afterwards. “But I hope that I will be able to compete against these kinds of players on a professional level in big leagues one day and not just in a fun challenge. Therefore, I will give everything I have, because there is nothing better to collect unique moments like this.”