Messi says Aspire Academy awesome
Lionel Messi — dubbed the “new Maradona” — arrived in Doha yesterday to train alongside some of the most exciting young talent working and studying at the Aspire Academy for Sports Excellence.
Messi, who has earned a string of accolades for his performances for Spanish Primera Division team FC Barcelona and for the Argentina national team, led a full training session with the 24 successful players from “Aspire Africa. Football Dreams”, the world’s largest football talent search.
The 24 boys have been picked from over 400,000 participants in seven different African nations as part of the talent search programme and are currently training at the Academy for the final stages of the selection process.
Messi was impressed by the speed, skills and general competence of the players, and said that the Aspire facilities were “awesome”.
Lionel Messi said: “The Aspire Academy is an astonishing facility and the team that I trained with today all have a great future in football. It’s really encouraging to see the high level of support that football has here in Qatar.”
Following that session, the Aspire Africa under-14 team played a full match against the under-15 team of leading Portuguese club FC Porto.
Dr. Andreas Bleicher, Sports Director, Aspire, said: “A key part of the development process at Aspire involves ensuring that our student athletes have the opportunity to train with and play against leading international teams. Working with Lionel Messi today and Luiz Felipe Scolari yesterday gives these students the training opportunity of a lifetime.”
