MULTAN, Jan 25 (APP): A Belgian coach currently in Pakistan as part of Global Soccer Venture (GSV) to select talented most footballers for their planned grooming in Europe believed Pakistani youngsters must enjoy football and practice harder to improve their skills with the ball and boots.
It was Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Kamyab Jawan Sports Drive that brought St Patrick’s Football Club coaching staff licensed from pro-UEFA as part of GSV to Pakistan moving from city to city to hunt football talent.
Karel Fraeye was upbeat the GSV initiative would help find football talent out of the large Pakistani population. “Belgium has a population of 11 million and we are number one in world so Pakistan with 220 million people, it must be sure we have talented players.”
The Belgian coach, assisted by his country mate Dennis Ricardo and Marc Antonio from UK, was seen witnessing and training 73 young players demonstrating their skills at divisional sports ground here Tuesday, a day after local coaches filtered them out of hundreds of aspiring young footballers.
He said: “I’ve seen a mix of real players and the others ageing over 20 and 21. I have seen some terrific players and have spoken to them the more you play the better player you become.” “Enjoy football and play as much as you can to become better players,” he said.
Pakistani players’ training and working hard every day would yield results, he said adding: “We will work with them to make them better players.”
Multan was the fifth city where GSV conducted trials after Peshawar, Sialkot, Muzaffarabad, Faisalabad and Lahore would be their next destination as GSV moves forward to complete talent hunt exercise covering 10 cities before they finally reach Islamabad to complete selection of Pakistani footballers. Twenty players would be filtered out from each city and the 200 would undergo tougher trials in Islamabad.
The selected footballers would be sent to Dublin in Ireland to train with the St Patrick’s Football Club.
St Patrick’s Athletics have signed a three-year agreement with Global Soccer Ventures to be the feeder club for the programme under which local coaches would be trained in nine Pakistani cities while 20 selected young footballers, 18-21, would train and play in Dublin with St Patrick’s Athletics Academy, and potentially with the Saints’ first team in the League of Ireland, according to a Jan 6, 2022 story published in irishexaminer.com.
