09 Feb 2015
Doha, 9 February 2015. After the group stage of the ‘Al Kass International Cup’ concluded on Sunday night, the teams of Aspire have qualified for the quarter finals and know the clubs they are going to face: Aspire Academy will play AC Milan on Tuesday evening (6:00PM) with Aspire International taking on Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday afternoon (3:35PM).
Despite major changes in the squad compared to last year, the defending champion Aspire International head into the knockout stages as group winners without having conceded a goal in their first two games. Defeating Schalke 04 and Real Madrid can already be seen as a big achievement for the team that has only been together for two weeks and features players of different clubs and federations from 14 countries across the world that have cooperation’s with Aspire Academy. The team also includes a number of players from the Aspire Football Dreams program. If it’s up to the players the quarter-finals will not be the end of their journey. “It’s a new team, but we get better with every training and game.
Of course it’s not always easy to communicate, but football is a global language and we all share the same goal – defending the title from last year,” says Aspire International captain Jean Jules Mvondo. His teammate Denny Schmid adds: “It’s a great chance for all of us to show our skills on an international stage and more and more friends, family members and people from our own countries have started to follow the tournament. That’s also very motivating for us.” For the QatariAspire Academy team, despite reaching their primary goal to qualify for the knock-out stage coach Mohamed Ahmed Al Shafai insists that his team has to improve if they want to progress in the tournament. “In our second game the players lacked the focus they had shown in the game against Vissel Kobe and were taught a valuable lesson by Arsenal.
For that game, I changed the team and some positions so every player in the squad could get some playing time and gain experience in a high level environment. That’s one of the benefits of tournaments like this and we have to make use of it.” His hopes for the game against AC Milan? “Of course, we go in to every game with the objective to win and in the knockout stage that’s all that matters.”