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ASPIRE Football Dreams
ASPIRE Football Dreams is a unique and fascinating scouting project, aimed at giving teenage boys from underdeveloped nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America the opportunity to earn scholarships to study and train at ASPIRE Academy in Doha and ASPIRE Senegal in Africa. Football Dreams identifies the future talent of world football. The program is sponsored by ASPIRE, with NIKE and UNICEF as supporting sponsors.
The ASPIRE Football Dreams project tested 430,000 young footballers in Africa in 2006-2007, 540,000 in Africa in 2007-2008 and 630,000 young footballers from Africa, Asia and Latin America in 2008-2009, as part of the largest-ever talent search within the sport. The program utilized over 800 playing fields in 15 countries, involving 6,500 volunteers, provided over 13,000 balls, distributed 105,000 items of equipment and included coaching instruction.
2008-2009 Countries
AFRICA: Senegal, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria
ASIA: Vietnam, Thailand
LATIN AMERICA: Guatemala, Costa Rica, Paraguay
The project relies on a team of dedicated coaches and experienced talent scouts and includes a coach training program.
The top players from each country travel to Qatar and are hosted at ASPIRE Academy, where they receive top-level training from Academy coaches and play games each week against other teams. World famous football stars visit and share their advice and experiences, and many of the young aspirants receive scholarships to ASPIRE Academy or ASPIRE Senegal.
Both ASPIRE Academy and ASPIRE Senegal are international elite sports training institutes with a multi-national student population and a commitment to awarding student scholarships to talents from underdeveloped nations. The philosophy of ASPIRE is for every student-athlete to maximize his athletic talent and go on to play for his country’s national team. The Academy does not recruit foreign student-athletes for the purpose of having them play for Qatar national teams.
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