Weekend aspirations

Back in April I told you to keep your eyes peeled for a plan to uncover the very best young footballers in the country. Aspire Football Dreams is a worldwide search for the stars of tomorrow. Since 2007, when the project was launched, over 1 million young footballers from Asia, Latin America and Africa have been tested to see if they have what it takes to become a top player of the future. With support from Nike and Unicef, and with the involvement of coaches from Barcelona, the top players from each region travel to Doha in Qatar and are hosted at Aspire Academy, where they receive top-level training during their sports scholarship. Now Aspire are bringing their search to Cambodia and will hold trials this coming weekend in four centers to identify the best footballing talent aged 13-15 years old. The first trial will be at the RSN Stadium in Tuol Kork on Friday when 200 boys are expected to attend, including members of the Phnom Penh Crown Academy, then the trials will move onto Pursat, Battambang and Kompong Chhnang with similar numbers of youngsters involved. The coach-scouts from Aspire and local coaches such as Bouy Dary and Sam Schweingruber will pick only the very best, perhaps three at the most, who will move onto the final selection stage, to be held in Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam next month, and from there the best of the best from Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam will go to Qatar. This is a never-before opportunity for the cream of Cambodian youth football to rise to the top. Let's hope they make it.