Boca Juniors are to train young Chinese soccer players in Buenos Aires and also prepare coaches in Beijing in a deal sponsored by a leading Chinese drink, the Argentine club announced on Wednesday.
The initiative, sponsored by Jiaduobao, aims to improve the skill levels of Beijing’s players.
Boca Juniors president Daniel Angelici welcomed a first batch of Chinese players, who have begun work at the Argentine team’s Casa Amarilla training camp, and said his club would also be sending instructors to teach soccer coaches in China.
Photo: AFP
“It’s been a few days now that these young men have been living and practicing at our training camp,” Angelici said at a press conference. “Yesterday morning, I went to see them and I saw them playing with our juniors, and this made me very happy because Boca always try to be pioneers in questions of exchanges, to continue growing in a country with millions of people like China, to have a market that we can explore with sports schools.”
“With this agreement that we are going to sign for social and sports cooperation, we promise to continue working and to send our coaches to China,” Angelici said.
Under the agreement, which also involves the Beijing Sports Fund created for the development of sports in China, 60 junior players from Beijing are to visit Argentina, in three separate groups, for training.
“Argentina’s national team is [among] the best in the world, and for that reason it is very interesting for these Chinese young men to come and learn the techniques, philosophy and strategy of Argentine football,” Chinese Cultural Attache to Buenos Aires Han Mengtang said.
Twice World Cup winners Argentina finished runners-up to Germany in this year’s final in Brazil after a 1-0 defeat in Sunday’s showpiece at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro.
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