LaLiga has signed an agreement with Vicente del Bosque Football Academy to promote the new Mallorca International Football Cup initiative, a soccer tournament for boys and girls focused on training in values with a global vocation that will take place in the Balearic Islands between June 28 and July 2.
LaLiga will collaborate with the organization chaired by Don Vicente del Bosque, ambassador from 2019 of LaLiga Genuine, the LaLiga competition for footballers with intellectual disabilities, for the development and promotion of this sporting, touristic and inclusive event, where LaLiga clubs such as Levante UD and Real Betis participate.
The “Mallorca International Football Cup” will have the following categories: Alevín and Infantil, both soccer 8/11 and futsal, integration soccer (Genuine), women’s base soccer and Legends category (veterans).
Both organizations coincide in their commitment to soccer as an educational and integrating tool, and share fundamental values such as tolerance, integration, companionship and sportsmanship, so their collaboration arises naturally.
The Vicente del Bosque Football Academy projects already have more than 12,000 athletes from 26 nationals since its launch in 2011 and, after the success of the 5 editions of the local tournament “Vicente Del Bosque First Mallorca Cup”, which was held between the years 2015-2019, has wanted to go a step further and launch this first edition of the new “Mallorca International Football Cup”, a cultural, social and sporting event with an integrative, family and tourist vocation, which is positioned as a benchmark in this type of events. LaLiga will incorporate this event into the annual calendar of activities in which it participates.
LaLiga, for its part, has extensive experience and know-how in this type of project, and since 2021 has made a firm commitment to training and educational and social sports projects through LaLiga Grassroots, its new global initiative to promote and encourage grassroots soccer around the world, which has already accumulated more than 500 projects in 40 different countries through which more than 175,000 players have been trained.
“We are very pleased to collaborate with Vicente del Bosque Football Academy, as we share very similar ideas about the role of soccer as a tool to improve society through the positive values of sport. From LaLiga we are firmly committed to grassroots soccer for the development from childhood not only of good soccer players but also of good people, and we also have pioneering social projects at a global level such as LaLiga Genuine, our competition for players with intellectual disabilities, unique in the world, of which Vicente del Bosque is an ambassador. “Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, said.
“We are convinced that going hand in hand with LaLiga in the sports training projects that we carry out at the Academy and especially in the new” Mallorca International Football Cup “initiative to promote family tourism through sport for all, is the best way to give visibility to all groups that practice soccer, creating a benchmark event that can be established in the calendar in the coming years with international repercussions,” says Vicente del Bosque.
“I want you to take advantage of soccer to become better,” advises the former Spain coach to the participants in his campus.
“If you don’t dominate the ball, it’s a bad thing…” It was one of the lessons taught by Vicente del Bosque at the opening of his first campus in the cradle of soccer, at the Rayners Lane FC ground in London, in front of eighty boys and girls who proudly wore the shirt of his academy.
“It’s very difficult to get there, but I’m not telling you to stop dreaming,” stressed the “best coach in the world” (awarded as such by FIFA in 2012, after winning the World Cup and the European Championship). “What I want is for you to use soccer as a tool to become better: I don’t know if we’ll be able to make good players out of you, but we’ll make good kids.
“We are coming to London to internationalize our work,” admitted Del Bosque. “And to show in passing that soccer has no borders, even if some people want to put them up again.”
The three-day campus is open to children of all nationalities, but the presence of the “Spanish quarry” has been more than guaranteed through the Cañada Blanch Soccer School, directed by Tomás Ruiz, who acted as presenter at the well-attended ceremony, along with campus director Pau Alberti.
“We are facing a global project that finally arrives in London, after a delay forced by the pandemic,” explained Tomás Ruiz. “Vicente del Bosque not only symbolizes the success of our soccer, but also a way of working, embodied since 2011 in the academy that bears his name and where sports and values training go hand in hand”.
“Soccer teaches you to be generous”, was another of the “lessons” of the maestro Del Bosque, who emphasized that in the “campus” there is no competitive pressure and that what prevails is precisely “friendship with the ball” (technique) and team play, including parents. “Tactics will come later,” stressed the former national team coach, a standard bearer of restraint and balance from the bench.
“There is no single model, but I believe that in soccer it is very important to control emotions,” explained Del Bosque with his usual parsimony. “Although sometimes I see my reaction to Iniesta’s goal, like shrinking and clenching my fists, and I don’t know if I could have celebrated it in any other way…. It fills me with pride to see our heroes, like Xavi or Xabi Alonso, now become coaches”.
About the new national coach, Luis de la Fuente, it is enough for him to say that he is his “friend” and that he hopes he can get the best out of the new generation of the “reds”, despite the puncture in Qatar… “Winning a World Cup is something very difficult, which also requires a touch of luck: we had it in South Africa”.
“Without the victory, nothing is the same,” concluded Del Bosque, in a final lesson in realism. “I probably wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t won the World Cup (…) The truth is that I ended up being a professional coach due to the vicissitudes of life. For 17 years, my job was in the Real Madrid youth academy: working with the youngsters and knowing how to attract them. And to make sure that the best moments of their lives are associated with soccer”.
In a pleasant day, Vicente del Bosque has visited for the first time the Rafa Nadal Academy by Movistar. During his stay in Manacor, the former national coach has known first hand the facilities where the Vicente del Bosque Summer Campus will be held, which will take place at the Academy from August 1 to 15.
Accompanied by the Director of the Academy Toni Nadal and by the commercial and marketing manager Maribel Nadal, Del Bosque visited the soccer field, the tennis courts, the Rafa Nadal International School and all the spaces that the children attending the Summer Campus will be able to use. “I had a little reference of what the facilities were, but the truth is that it has surpassed what I had seen in the television reports. Today is a nice day to see that our country, through a great athlete, can have magnificent facilities to serve as a base so that every day we have better kids in every way, personally and also in sports”. said Del Bosque.
During the course of the day, Vicente del Bosque also visited the Rafa Nadal Museum, which houses both the trophies won by Rafa Nadal and objects donated by some of the greatest sportsmen in history. Del Bosque donated a Spanish National Team jersey to the Museum, which is now on display in the soccer area of the Museum. At the end of the visit, Rafa Nadal shared a pleasant chat with Vicente del Bosque, whom he thanked for his involvement in the organization of his Summer Campus at the Academy.
To close his visit, Del Bosque shared his thoughts on the importance of training young people at this time of the year: “I am always concerned that we do things right, that we are a reference for the children, that we don’t do anything foolish and that we are very serious about guaranteeing that this is going to work well. We also have the great concern that the kids learn and have fun, but also that they have the maximum security, that nothing happens and that everything is under control and that they remember their time at our Academy with the greatest possible pleasure. In the summer time it is logical that we give them an alternative, it does not mean that soccer is the only way to train the kids, but it is a way to get closer to what is best for them. As parents, we see it permanently and we are aware that taking a child to a facility to play sports is always positive. Instead of being at home all day with video games, they are with their peers, they socialize, those who are a little more detached are making friends and I think it is a stage in their lives that they will always remember..
The collaboration includes various initiatives during the Vicente del Bosque Summer Campus in June and July at the Vicente del Bosque Municipal Sports Center.
Fuencarral-El Pardo has renewed its commitment to the promotion of sports as a tool for integration among young people with intellectual disabilities with the signing, by the councilman, Javier Rámirez, the extension of the collaboration agreement with the Juanito Maravilla Foundation, which has signed its president, José Platas. During the signing was also present the former coach of the National Football Team, Vicente del Bosque.
Thanks to this agreement, a sports training program in values and healthy habits through soccer will be carried out again during the months of June and July in the Summer Campus 2023 of the Vicente del Bosque Football Academy, in the Vicente del Bosque Municipal Sports Center, which includes sports activities and specific 11-a-side soccer training. This program, which has professionals with extensive experience in the world of professional sports and training, will also include the granting of 49 sports scholarships for children referred by the district’s social services due to their situation of vulnerability.
With this initiative, which has been running for several years, Fuencarral-El Pardo provides young people with a space from which to promote individual development, friendship, integration and fellowship through the practice of soccer.
We are very happy to announce the new collaboration agreement with the City Council of Noreña to be part of one of the official venues of the Summer Camp Vicente Del Bosque 2021.
The campus will be held next summer for one week from Monday, August 16 to Friday, August 20, 2021. With the possibility of extending for an additional week.
Next Sunday June 13 from 9:00 am to 11:00 am at the soccer field Alejandro Ortea (Noreña) is scheduled the free Masterclass day for all those children who want to participate with the presence of the official coaches of the academy and Don Vicente Del Bosque.
