Hi everyone, Our adventure began at the end of October: we made the trip to Salzburg together with our team guide Isa. Salzburg is a city in Austria, famous the world over for its cultural heritage. But more on that later. For us it’s all about football, of course, because we’ll be part of the U-18 team of FC Red Bull Salzburg. They are Austria’s top club, where working with young players is taken very seriously. That was obvious straight away. We were welcomed to the ultra-modern training centre by Academy coach Henrik Pedersen from Denmark and were made to feel at home in the team from the very first training session. The youth team is a mixture of players from different countries. The coaching team is very motivated, they look at every player individually, and the training programme is very diverse. We focus on standards, then tactics, then there’s another session in the gym. But we have the most fun, of course, when we’re allowed to play football. And we can do that, too. We train twice a day, sometimes very early because most of the players have to go to school afterwards. And so do we – a teacher from Doha is always with us on site, and we keep in constant touch with the Aspire Academy teachers via Skype. Although we haven’t been here in Salzburg very long, we have already made friends with some of our teammates. It helps, of course, that like us, many of the Academy players are staying at the Kolping Hostel Salzburg. Fortunately most of the other players speak good English too, so there are no communication problems. At the same time we are also learning a little German – we already know how to say “please” – “bitte” – and “thank you” – “danke”. ;-) What did surprise us, though, is how cold it is. The winter here is very cold, temperatures can drop as low as minus 10! Luckily the club equipped us for winter straight away. We also have bikes, which is practical, because the city isn’t very big. There are around 150,000 people living here and you can get from A to B very quickly. One place that impressed us straight away was the club’s home ground – the Red Bull Arena with a capacity of 32,000. The club is having a very strong season internationally this year. In the UEFA Europa League, Red Bull Salzburg finished the group phase in first place. What else can we tell you? Salzburg’s old town is superb – as well as some cool shops and nice restaurants there are a lot of historical sights. We’ve already visited the birthplace of the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which was quite impressive. The city also has a great ambience, being set in the mountains, one of which – the Gaisberg – we already climbed one afternoon we had free. The view of the city from up there was just amazing! So far it has been a great experience for us and we are sure that our time here will help us to become better football players and broaden our horizon. There’ll be more from us soon, when you’ll be able to get a picture of our early days in Salzburg from a video we’ll be making. Regards from Salzburg! Muaaz & Jassim senD message
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