15 Jan 2015
Doha, 15 December 2015.Niko Kovac, coach of the Croatian national football team, and Per-Mathias Høgmo, coach of the Norwegian national football team, were both welcomed at Aspire Academy on Thursday by Markus Egger, Director of Strategy, and taken on a tour through the Academy. After having the opportunity to see the facilities and hear more about the Academy’s philosophy they also had the chance to talk with Director General Ivan Bravo.
During their visit Coach Niko and his assistant Robert Kovac also watched the training of the student-athlete table tennis team and exchanged a few words with the coaches and fellow Croatian countrymen Zlatko Novakovic andDaniel Rojnic. “In order to develop talents it is very important to have good facilities and to create a perfect environment and what Aspire Academy has to offer in this perspective is really impressive.
Then it’s, of course, up to the coaches and the players what they make of it. As I have heard, the Academy is only ten years old and whilst relatively youngthey have already had some good international results. Taking into account the small population of Qatar their philosophy in terms of supporting the development of talents is outstanding and I wish we had similar facilities in Croatia for our young football players and athletes,” said Niko Kovac. For Jan Åge Fjørtoft, team manager of Norway, the visit of Doha also brought back some memories. “Twenty-two years ago I played here with Norway.
We won 6-1 against Qatar and that was the only time I scored a hat-trick in the national team.” Norway’s coach Høgmo was also very interested to hear about the international conferences and training camps Aspire had organized and hosted in the past: “A sports center like this is truly an inspiration and I like the approach to bring people from the world of sport together at a place like this to exchange ideas and experiences. That’s a great way to learn from each other.”