After arriving at Frankfurt or Düsseldorf airport, head to your hotel to relax after the long flight.
The experiences you have when you are young can sometimes change a person's life dramatically. Leaving your parents behind and traveling overseas as a youth can have a huge impact on not only your future soccer career, but on your entire life, and can even increase your life choices.
In fact, after the soccer camp, some players are so determined to play overseas that they come to our company alone for a homestay several months or even years later.
Through the camp, players will play against other overseas players of the same age, come into contact with different cultures and learn about different customs. Through these various experiences, they will come into contact with diverse values and broaden their own values.
An interpreter always accompanies the players during the training camp, but we try to only interpret as much as necessary so that the players can communicate as much as possible with the local players and coaches during practice sessions. There may be things that work and don't work in Germany, a soccer-advanced country, and sometimes things that are different from common sense in Japan. Such unique experiences that can only be had overseas will give players great confidence not only in their soccer careers, but in their future lives as well.
A valuable experience that you will never forget even as an adult!!
Joint training with local youth teams. You will experience the level of local soccer players your age and the difference between them and Japan, and for the first time you will encounter a major hurdle: communication.
As long as the schedule allows, we will play tournaments or general practice matches with several local teams of the same age. You can experience a big difference in soccer against German teams who are physically well-built and have grown up in an environment blessed with soccer.
If there are camp dates and Bundesliga dates, you can watch the best soccer teams in Europe and the world, such as local powerhouses Dortmund and Borussia Monchengladbach!
Watching soccer in a stadium with an average attendance of about 80,000 people is mind-blowing.
If you're a soccer fan, this is something you should see at least once in your life.
Köln Dom (Cologne Cathedral) is a Gothic cathedral built over a period of approximately 632 years and is registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We will be sightseeing and shopping in the center of Cologne behind the Cathedral.
After arriving at Frankfurt or Düsseldorf airport, head to your hotel to relax after the long flight.
The four-star Hotel Dorint where we will be staying is located in Düren, a town about 30 minutes from Cologne. It was newly built in 2018 and has a lawn and fountain in front of the hotel where guests and locals can relax. The hotel is so beautiful that parents will be jealous, and it is located in the center of Düren, so the location is perfect.
After a night's sleep and a breakfast of delicious European bread to recharge our energy, we began practicing with the local players.
In the morning, afternoon, or on a day off, we will enjoy a European holiday by visiting the Cologne Cathedral, a World Heritage Site, going shopping in the city, eating Strassenkicker, a brand run by Lukas Podolski, and eating ice cream. If there is time left in the schedule, we will go a little further and go sightseeing in a city in the Netherlands, and we hope that the students will return home with as many experiences as possible abroad.
If the camp dates coincide with the Bundesliga dates, you can witness world-class, exciting matches. The stadium is on a level you can't experience in Japan, and the enthusiasm of the fans is so intense you'll never forget it once you've seen it. If you're lucky, you may also be able to watch public practice sessions, where you can get up close and personal with players who are too far away to reach at the stadium. Not only can you get autographs, but lucky players may even get cleats or goalkeeper gloves from professional players!
Of course, they didn't come all the way to this faraway country just to sightsee. They traveled 9,000km to experience world football firsthand and have experiences they could not have in Japan. One of the strengths of German football is the scouting of youth players. Scouts' eyes are already shining everywhere from the age of 11 or 12. What will work as an individual and as a team against a team full of highly vital players who are playing desperately to catch the scouts' eyes? Every play is an experience that will live on in the future. I hope that they will cherish every minute and second of their limited playing time in Germany and use it as a source of inspiration for the future.
There are meetings and there are partings