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Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Study Tour to Santos FC Soccer Academy Orlando, USA
Brazilian Football School trains Kazakh Juniors Kazakh youth get a chance to learn Brazil-style football
Brazil and Kazakhstan are half-way around the world from one another, and have very different languages and customs. But the two countries have at least one thing in common: football is more than just a sport - it is a national obsession.
This shared passion is bringing the two countries closer together through a new program that sends Kazakh youth to a football academy in Brazil for three years. Shortly before New Year’s, the first 26 Kazakh enrolees in the Ole Brasil Club football academy in São Paulo returned home for a holiday break.
Aleksander Keplin, Press Secretary for Kazakhstan’s Football Union, told Central Asia Online, the program was proposed by President Nursultan Nazarbayev and won the support of Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Kazakhstan has allocated 83 million KZT (US $550,000) to fund the training for athletes 13 to 15 years old. The program is operated under Kazakhstan’s Bolashak (Future) education program.
At the end of the three-year training, Kazakhstan’s Football Union hopes to get a “ready-made team, able to play with dignity in the global arena”, Keplin said According the kids themselves, they felt significant progress in the art of football in their first year of study.
Berik Shaikhov said the chance for the Kazakhs to distinguish themselves came just two weeks after the start of training, when their team took part in the São Paulo Juniors Cup. Kazakhstan’s juniors advanced far enough to win the Copa São Paulo, beating out their strong opponents, the Cravinhos, 2-0.
After that success, Shaikhov and his team-mate Rauan Sariyev, both midfielders, went to the Ole Brasil Club’s select academy, within which they took part in the city’s Campeonato Paulista Categoria Júnior (Junior Division Paulist Championship).
“I scored 15 goals for Kazakhstan’s team in this local cup, and I ‘rolled’ another 10 balls for the Paulist Championship!”, exclaimed Sariyev, who became one of the most effective scorers in both tournaments.
Both Shaikhov and Sariyev have noticed that training at Ole Brasil is significantly different from that of Kazakh sports schools.
They said there is more importance placed on the physical preparation of the player, and ball-handling and kicking techniques are honed differently. They added that they particularly liked the atmosphere and the real cult of football — something that Kazakhstan’s attitude toward football cannot yet match.
Both boys’ parents said that their children have changed not only physically, but also psychologically, having become much more confident. “My son even became too self-confident”, said Rauan’s father, Yerlan Sariyev.
Among the other members of Kazakhstan’s draft to São Paulo, are offensive player Alisher Toktasynov, midfielder Mukhtar Kalymbekov and goalkeeper Almas Kurmanali. The boys said there are representatives of many countries in the Ole Brasil Club’s football academy, but they are the only ones from the former Soviet Union. Sariyev noted that in contrast to the Kazakh students in the Bolashak programme, half of which do not return to the country, all of the junior football players plan to play right at home.
“I think that something good will come out of the boys training in Brazil now”, Aleksandr Arefiev, the coach of Kazakhstan’s select juniors told Central Asia Online. “Not only do they learn to play, they also learn to win, and this is no less important than physical training and technique. The psychology of a winner; That is what Kazakhs are often lacking on the football field”.
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