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Post by pilipinasdragonsfc on Mar 19, 2016 12:29:27 GMT 8
The Pilipinas Dragons B2000 team will be playing at one of the top, most difficult tournaments in the world. This tournament, known as he Mediterranean International Cup, annually hosts the top professional youth academies from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the USA. Attendees include : FC Barcelona Academy Real Madrid Villareal Manchester United Manchester City Liverpool Tottenham Hotspurs Celtic Intermilan Aspire Dreams, an all star team of players taken from across Africa 32 teams from the USA ...and many more This tournament has had participation from the world's best youth, including: Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona Cesc Fabregas of Chelsea Neymar of FC Barcelona Gerrard Pique of FC Barcelona Juan Mata of Manchester United Jordi Alba of FC Barcelona Coutinho of Liverpool Anderson of Manchester United ...and many others Next week the Dragons will be going up against the future Messi's of the world in this tough tournament. We have the honor of being the first Filipino team to attend this tournament, and in fact we are the first team from Southeast Asia to join. Our contingent has left the Philippines late last evening, and are now enroute to Barcelona. On arrival at 1225PM local time in the Barcelona airport, the team will be met by officials of the Philippine Consulate in Barcelona. Prior to the tournament, the team will play two friendlies, one against a team from Japan, and one against a youth academy from a Spanish Professional team. Our objective is to benchmark our boys against the best players the world has to offer. There are 64 teams in our age division, and our group stage pits us against three other youth academies. These are teams from professional academies in Spain, Brazil, and Japan. According to the bracket setup, if we make it to the Semifinals, we could be up against FC Barcelona. This will be a great experience for our boys, and we hope to share our experience with the youth football community throughout the country. We will be publishing a variety of info including videos, pictures, participant stories, a diary of experiences from our players. We hope this experience, no matter what the result, will help the grassroots development of the Philippines across the country as we seek to share as much information as we can. www.micfootball.com/en/home.htmlwww.facebook.com/dragonsfootballacademy |
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Post by pilipinasdragonsfc on Mar 23, 2016 16:57:02 GMT 8
Day 1 19Mar : Travel MNL-Barcelona and arrival in Barcelona The team left Manila late Friday evening /early Saturday morning, at 1225AM o Saturday March 19th. The flight had a stopover in Dubai and arrived in Barcelona at 1225PM on the 19th. Since Barcelona is 7 hours behind, this meant a total travel time of 19 hours! The boys were met at the Barcelona airport by the Philippines Consul, Mr. Fely Fortaleza and other staff of the consulate there. The boys had this to say...  It was a LONG flight. But when we arrived, we were greeted by people from the Philippines Consulate here in Barcelona. They were really nice and gave us a nice welcome. When we got outside, we were surprised how cold it was. We knew it would be cold, but we just had no idea it would be like this! The bus ride to the hotel passed through some beautiful areas. Finally, we arrived at the Surf-Mar hotel on the seaside of the Costa Brava.  Upon arrival, coach let us just go to our rooms and settle in. We did a bit of shopping, had some dinner, and were in bed by 9PM! We are looking forward to some friendlies in the next few days before the tournament starts. |
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Post by pilipinasdragonsfc on Mar 23, 2016 16:57:55 GMT 8
Day 2 20Mar : Field Training and Vanquish Jet Lag! Schedule today: 6:30 - limbering & jogging 8:00 - breakfast 10:00 - nature walk through the mountains and perimeter of beach to the other side of Lloret. 12:00 - Palm Sunday Mass at Placa de L'Esglasia 1:30 - Lunch at Hotel Surf-Mar 3:30 - Siesta 6:00 - Field Training 8:30 - Dinner 9:30 - Lights out From our players in Barcelona: Its our second day here at Barcelona and it was the first time we went limbering in the cold. The weather was difficult to work with and a lot of us took time to get used to it.  The hotel is great, and the town is simply beautiful. So far I'm enjoying every second here. Would like to come back some time to see more but of course we are here first and foremost for football! Can't wait to play! We have training this afternoon which should be fun. We went out again and went to the beach. It was really amazing, this area called "Costa Brava" has wonderful scenery, we all had a good time taking photos.  We also went to Palm Sunday Mass in the town. We met some nice old ladies who asked us a lot of questions, like who we were, why were we there, and where did we come from.By the end of our little chat there was a little crowd of curious townfolk smiling and listening to our story. They were so friendly, Spanish people are really Nice!  |
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Post by boyfootball655 on Mar 24, 2016 0:45:23 GMT 8
Great seeing this! Good luck to you guys, Make us proud!
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Post by pilipinasdragonsfc on Mar 25, 2016 18:38:02 GMT 8
MIC has created a documentary video of our boys:
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Post by pilipinasdragonsfc on Mar 25, 2016 19:01:23 GMT 8
Day 3 21Mar : First friendly with a Spanish team!
7:00 am - Limbering and Jogging
8:30 am - Breakfast
12:30 am Lunch
1:30 - Rest
3:45 - Lobby call time
4:00 - Banyoles Friendly
7:00 - Friendly vs Banyoles
9:00 Late quick dinner before heading home
Our first friendly with a tough Spanish academy. We were only in the country for just over 48 hours, so we're still jet lagged for this match. But the biggest impact for our boys were the cold temperatures. At night, with temperatures around 6deg c, our boys were facing great difficulties trying to focus on their game. Under perfect conditions, and without the lag, we would have done much better... our final result was a loss, 0-3, but the team learned a lot of valuable lessons about playing in the cold which will be very important for the main MIC tournament. Here is a video of the game:
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Post by pilipinasdragonsfc on Mar 26, 2016 17:38:54 GMT 8
Day 4 22Mar : Friendly against the JP Academy (Japan) Schedule for Mar 22 8:00 am - limbering and jogging 9:00 am - breakfast 10:00 am - laundry 12:30 pm -Lunch 1:30pm - Personal time 3:00pm - Head to Lloret de Mar football pitch 4:00pm - friendly vs JP Academy, Japan 7:00pm - dinner 9:00pm - lights out Our players commented... Woke up a bit later today to help work out our jet lag, Coach didn't knock on our door until 8AM! YAY! We did our morning limbering, then back to the Hotel for breakfast. We really have to be careful at meals, the hotel buffets are HUGE and full of stuff Coach doesn't want us to eat!  Today Coach inspected our rooms, looking at neatness and how we did our laundry. Each room has 3 boys, so it is a team effort and a great "life" experience. Coach gave each room a grade. I'm afraid my room came in last - uh oh, extra laps in practice!!!  By later in the afternoon, we were able to clean our room and do our laundry, so we were able to redeem ourselves! Coach Ayi awarded these guys with the title "Best Lavenderas". Not too sure I wanna win that one...  We had time to rest a little bit, and then got ready for our friendly against the JP Academy of Japan. We were excited to win this tough match. The Japanese were VERY well organized with crisp passing. Our game was still rough as we were still adjusting to the cold. We won the match 3-1 but felt we could have done better. (Editor's notes...) Following are the links to our game against the JP Football Academy of Japan. It is interesting to note that this team had some tough matches in the main draw. One important match was against the professional youth academy of the pro team San Jose DTE sin LIMITE (Columbia). The San Jose team is filled with pro prospects from Colombia, which is currently FIFA no.8 in the world. Of even more note is the world ranking of the professional mens team of San Jose, which is currently ranked No.2 in Colombia by footballdatabase.com. Other rankings have the club consistently ranked among the top 15 in the world. During the regular tournament, the JP Football Academy played to a 1-1 draw with San Jose, which could suggest that we are very competitive with youth academies in Colombia. Here are the links to our friendly : 2016-0322 MIC Friendly 2 - Pilipinas Dragons FC vs Japan Football Academy - 1st Half (SD) |
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Post by pilipinasdragonsfc on Mar 26, 2016 18:05:35 GMT 8
Day 5 23Mar : MIC16 Opening Ceremonies and 1st match vs Bellmare (Japan)
March 23 Schedule
6:00am - Call time at the lobby
7:00am - breakfast
8:00am - bus ride
9:00am - MIC 16 Opening Ceremony
Location: Estadi Municipal de Montilivi, Girona
*after the ceremony, bus ride back to the hotel
12:00 - Lunch at Hotel Surf Mar
2:45pm - Bus ride to Match 1
4:00pm - MIC Match 1 vs.Bellmare Fujisawa Japan
Location Hostalric
Comments from our players...
Coach knocked on our door again early at 6AM. uugghhhh! Not an early morning person! But wait! Football! Yay! JUMP!
Haha went down for our limbering again in the COLD Spanish morning. After limbering, we cooled down a bit and went straight to breakfast. After breakfast we went via bus to the GIRONA stadium for the MIC16 Opening Ceremonies. Wow, there were so many teams there from around the world! Haha, we saw a lot of people looking at our national flag and asking "What team is that?" Philippines!!!
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Post by pilipinasdragonsfc on Mar 26, 2016 18:10:03 GMT 8
Some photos of the hotel:  Here is the pool area with last years U15 Champions, "Aspire Football Dreams." They are a team of mostly Senegalese players from their national team with a selection of other players from across Africa. They have come to many editions of the MIC tournament, and are consistent finalists and champions.  Here are our boys on the way into the opening ceremonies...  |
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Post by FromSulu on Dec 2, 2016 18:46:19 GMT 8
They are now participating in a International Youth tournament in Singapore this week.
aside from them,some of the youth team of UFL team have also participated in youth tournament outside the country,Kaya Under-11 played in Gothia Cup in China. Malaya FC(JP Voltes) played in Japan. Global and was it Kaya? that participated in a youth tourney in Malaysia. Ceres 16 and Under-18 played in Singa Cup in Singapore, considered as one of the prestigious youth tournament in Asia. There were also other youth team from the Philippines that played in Singapore tourney earlier this year.
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Post by poobla on Dec 2, 2016 21:47:23 GMT 8
They are now participating in a International Youth tournament in Singapore this week. aside from them,some of the youth team of UFL team have also participated in youth tournament outside the country,Kaya Under-11 played in Gothia Cup in China. Malaya FC(JP Voltes) played in Japan. Global and was it Kaya? that participated in a youth tourney in Malaysia. Ceres 16 and Under-18 played in Singa Cup in Singapore, considered as one of the prestigious youth tournament in Asia. There were also other youth team from the Philippines that played in Singapore tourney earlier this year. They played in the Singapore tournament last month. Lost in the quarterfinals on penalties. |
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Post by FromSulu on Dec 3, 2016 10:51:20 GMT 8
sorry, I got confused with the date.It was their Under-16 team. There was also a team representing Tanauan City.
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