Athletic Bilbao director visits and says: you can feel Sporting in the air | OneFootball

Sporting held an internal training session this Tuesday at the Cristiano Ronaldo Academy with the presence of Aitor Ugarte, director of methodology for Athletic Bilbao’s youth football. In this initiative, the Basque official shared his knowledge related to the area and got to see what the Lions’ daily work in Alcochete is like.

“It was a very beautiful experience. I was able to visit the Academy and I loved the facilities and the meaning of each one. You can breathe the Sporting atmosphere. Then I was able to share my experience and our model at Athletic. It is a luxury to be here, to share and to get to know other football cultures,” he began by saying in statements to Sporting TV, before putting his methodology into practice in a fully hands-on session with Sporting’s under-13 players on the pitch of the Aurélio Pereira Stadium.

“It is something different; the methodology they presented to us is very well structured and that gives us inputs that we can improve in our own process. As for the practical side, there was a strong focus on first touch and passing, spatial occupation and combination play, fundamentals that we also try to instil in our players,” analysed Marco Santos, coach of the Alvalade club’s under-13 team.

“It has a strong culture, it manages to remain at a high level for a long time and it does so with players developed in its own academy. That is of enormous value and, for that reason, we wanted to understand that reality in greater depth,” the coach concluded regarding the session.

This sharing of knowledge demonstrates the prestige that the green-and-whites’ academy holds in the context of European and world football. One concrete example is the “Aurélios”, a nickname referring to the 10 players developed at Sporting CP’s Academy who were part of the national team in the historic Euro 2016 triumph. Cristiano Ronaldo, the biggest name of all, was also developed at Sporting.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.