Club Brugge Youth Teams Take on ASPIRE

Leading Belgian football team, Club Brugge, sent two of their youth teams (’96 and ’92) to test and take on the might of ASPIRE’s student athletes last week. During their weeklong visit to Doha, in between enjoying the sights and sounds of Qatar’s capital, they played four matches at the Academy, two per age group. Of the two games on Tuesday October 6th, Brugges were only victorious in the battle of the ’96’s with the game ending 5.2 to the visiting team. Overall it was quite an even game and the two late goals that Brugges achieved resulted in a score line that didn’t give a true reflection of the game. Brugges had three strong players in key positions and they had a big influence on the game. A closely fought contest between the ’92 sides saw ASPIRE miss a penalty and several other good opportunities resulting in an entertaining but disappointing scoreless draw. Henk MARIMAN, Director of Club Brugge Football school, was satisfied of the overall atmosphere surrounding their journey in Qatar an ASPIRE:” It is a nice experience and journey for our boys, both in playing ASPIRE teams and experiencing new culture and tradition and discovering a new country for most of our boys. We were more than happy and delighted to have our kids playing in such a world class facilities of ASPIRE. I think it was a great opportunity for both sides to play these friendly games to achieve a certain level of competition regardless the results.” Thursday, October 8th saw the four teams come together again and this time the ASPIRE ’96 team didn’t give in quite so easily during an extremely close game that could have gone either way. The match ended 2.1 to the visitors and ASPRIE’s players were left very disappointed at the manner in which they gave away the two goals. Thursday’s second and final match of the visit saw the visitors victorious once more with a 1.0 win over the home side. A last minute goal saw Club Brugge come out on top in a very competitive game. As in the previous game, ASPIRE missed a penalty which ultimately cost the boys the match. Sadly, there were several ASPIRE ‘92 players unable to play due to U19 National Team commitments however, this gave the opportunity for players from younger age groups the valuable opportunity to step up and show how they could perform against a very talented visiting team. Michael Browne, ASPIRE Football Head coach, commented the friendly games against the visiting team of Club Brugge saying:” close games that could have gone either way. There were several Aspire 92 players unable to play due to U-19 National Team commitments. This gave the opportunity for players from younger age groups to step up and show how they could perform against a very useful Brugges side.” Some additional information about Club Brugge: Club Brugge Koninklijke Voetbalvereniging was founded in 1891 and is one of the top clubs in Belgium. Its home ground is the Jan Breydel Stadium, which has a capacity of 29,042. Club Brugge's major rivals are R.S.C. Anderlecht and Standard Liège, and it shares the Jan Breydel Stadium with city rival Cercle Brugge K.S.V..Club Brugge is the only Belgian club to have played the final of the European Cup (forerunner of the current UEFA Champions League) so far. They were beaten by Liverpool F.C. in 1978. They also lost in the 1976 UEFA Cup final to Liverpool.