Trio gets a feel of La Liga

The trials took place from April 29 to May 3 and the Zimbabweans arrived home last weekend in high spirits from their adventure in Europe.

The academy is an organisation dedicated to the scouting, training, developing and linking talented soccer youths with life-changing opportunities and sports scholarships both locally and abroad.

Matonga said he was very happy to be part of the team, he watched the recent Champions League semi-final match between Barcelona and Bayern Munich and then the Espanyol- Granada tie. “It was a dream come true, sitting and watching Barca was exciting, we even trained in their field and also went into their change rooms,” said Matonga.

Friendly Academy coach Patridge Muskwe has commended the players who took part in trials at the Sports City Dani Jarque RCD Espanyol training ground.
“I was impressed with the teams’ performance although I still feel we still have to improve as a nation in terms of our football fields. We believed our players performed well and it is our hope that one or two will make the grade this time.

“I was happy with all the three boys and they might be lucky and get called up. Our academy has grown; we now have about 40 players,” said Muskwe.
Richard Solobala, the other coach and director at the academy, believes they have room to groom better players.

“We believe as Friendly Academy in the concept of farming where on will always sow the seeds and God will provide with the rains and surely harvest time will come.
“We will keep on taking our young and talented players to Spain and across the world for exposure and to us that is sowing.

“We met African great player Thomas Nkono and is he is RCD Espanyol goalkeepers’ coach and we met Wakaso, it was motivating for to the young players,” said Solobala.
Training for the players was done by the technical team at RCD Espanyol and they use their methods of training at the club.

Technical experts monitored the training and compiled a report for each of the participating players and rating the possible incorporation of the players in the team.