Noa Skoko, Luka Didulica and Zac Stosic joined the Futboltec academy with Jason & Glen Trifiro for their recent 20 day tour of Europe and Japan. The invite came after some good performances at recent camps and tournaments in Sydney.
After flying out to Amsterdam the boys played 6 games in 9 days against some of Europe’s top junior clubs including Borussia Dortmund & Bochum in Germany, Genk & Club Brugge in Belgium and Pec Zwolle and Groningen in Holland.
The games were hard fought and there were mixed results with some big wins, heavy losses but also some very tight games. Noa scored 3 goals hitting the target against Genk, Brugge and Zwolle whilst Luka chipped in with a lovely finish against Groningen to end the European leg of the trip.
In the little down time they had the boys visited Borrusia Dortmund’s training grounds and its famous million dollar “Futbonaut” facility, which they had the rare opportunity to test out.
They also watched Anderlecht v Genk in a cracking top of the table clash at the Vanden Stock stadium in Brussels and were put through some testing at Groningen’s world class junior facility.
Luka was also lucky enough to watch Ajax v Den Haag and was the honarary guest kicking off the game and meeting some former greats such as Edwin Van Der Saar.
Next the boys travelled to Japan for the Yanmar Cup. They played 6 friendly games to prepare for the tournament and then produced some fine football to qualify for the ¼ finals, before falling to the eventual winners from Korea.
All the boys put in some top performances with Zac rock solid on the left hand side including a super assist along the way, Luka running the show in midfield with his aggressive tackling and no nonsense football and Noa showcasing some fine passing and deft touches.
The boys learned much about how a professional footballer lives and experienced the joys such as training, traveling, playing games in short succession. They learned about importance of eating and drinking well, recovery including physio, massage, resting in rooms, ice baths and in general the strict discipline needed to make it to the top.
Safe to say the boys had an amazing time and are thankful to Futboltec for giving them the invite for this trip of a lifetime.
