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GUATEMALA CITY -- A mild breeze ruffles the trees surrounding the field at
Cementos Progreso Stadium, as some of the country's brightest young soccer
stars run through drills under a deep blue sky. It's a perfect day for
soccer, the kind that would make anyone want to linger in Central America.
But on this afternoon, each of these 50 young men would like nothing better
than to earn a one-way ticket to a country halfway around the world.
After a nationwide search, this select group of teenagers has been brought
here to try to impress an international team of talent seekers from
countries including Spain, Germany and Brazil. Old hands at appraising
soccer talent, this football cognoscenti will choose a few Guatemalans to
travel to what is rapidly becoming one of the best youth soccer academies in
the world.
But the head scout, Josep Colomer, who made his name by bringing Thierry
Henry and Lionel Messi to Barcelona, is not headed back to Europe. The man
considered possibly the world's best judge of youth soccer talent doesn't
work for the Blaugrana anymore. He'll be sending the gems he plucks from
obscurity to meet up with others from around the world at Aspire Academy in
Qatar.
The announcement that the small Middle Eastern nation of Qatar would host
the 2022 World Cup stunned more than a few football fans. The Arab country
about the size of Connecticut will become by far the smallest ever to host
the tournament. Critics have asked loudly how a relatively unknown nation
could pull off such a coup. But look closer and you'll realize that it might
not be such a shock. You'll see that Qatar, through a program called
Football Dreams, has built a strong presence in many developing nations,
some of which also have representation on FIFA's executive committee that
voted on the hosting rights for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.
Indeed, despite relative obscurity in the popular consciousness of the
Western world, Qatar has quietly been making a name for itself in
international soccer circles. The country's al-Thani ruling family has long
showed an interest in international athletics, and in the past few years has
invested a portion of its immense wealth in a quest to make Qatar
competitive in a range of Olympic sports, including soccer.
As part of that vision, in 2004 the royal family funded the Aspire Academy
project to train Qatari athletes with the best technology and resources that
money could buy. Shortly after, as an offshoot of the academy's soccer
program, the Aspire Football Dreams program was launched to uncover youth
soccer talent hidden in the farthest-flung villages and outposts in the
world.
"I take more than 160 flights each year," Colomer told local press while in
Guatemala, as he assessed the annual fruits of one of 15 Football Dreams
programs scattered across Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. "I sleep
in a different village of the world every night. I leave my house in May
and return in December."
The program began in 2005 with a handful of camps in sub-Saharan Africa.
Since then, it has expanded to Latin America and Southeast Asia. Each year,
Aspire's scouts run the rule over hundreds of thousands of young players,
and through a series of increasingly exclusive trials, end up with a
scholarship class of international students invited to live, study and play
alongside the Qatari students at Aspire in Doha.
At inception, Football Dreams was billed as an innovative way to find
undiscovered talent and prepare those prodigies for top-level football,
while keeping them out of the hands of unscrupulous agents and human
traffickers. Colomer goes one better and describes the project primarily as
a humanitarian effort.
"Thanks to the Qatari royal family, we've been able to take on this
humanitarian project," he said. "This project is one that I've had inside me
since I was at Barcelona. It's an honor to represent [the royal family],
but the people won't really take notice until one of the kids who comes
through this program joins Barcelona or Manchester United or Real Madrid,
because the day will come when one of these kids comes out of nowhere and
goes to Aspire to become the next Messi. And all of this is just to give
kids an opportunity, regardless of their class or socioeconomic status."
Since its founding, backed by the royal family's bottomless bank accounts
and the contacts and clout of more recently added sponsors UNICEF and Nike,
Aspire Football Dreams has expanded rapidly if quietly, having now put more
than 2 million teenagers through trials in developing countries around the
world.
"There's no question that all countries have talent," Colomer said. "What
happens is that sometimes the players live in villages that are very far
from the capital and no one goes to see them, or their families are poor and
don't have the resources to get them into football schools so they can be
seen."
Colomer said Aspire succeeds in its mission by seeking out local contacts to
help reach untapped sources of youth talent outside the traditional
structure of club soccer, targeting young players still unaffiliated with
local teams.
Three from Guatemala made the cut this year, for example, and are headed to
Qatar for the final tryout phase in January. There, on fields that during
their short existence have been graced by Manchester United and the
Brazilian national team, they will meet up with representatives from the
other 14 country programs.
[+] EnlargeStaff
ICU Publicidad/Guatemala City
At the final round of tryouts for the Football Dreams program in Nigeria,
players pose with scouts from Aspire Academy.
A final team is chosen and its members are given full scholarships to Aspire
academy -- the equivalent of a high school education -- while they play on
the elite Aspire international team, traveling the world for tournaments and
earning invaluable exposure for players and the academy alike. Others will
be invited to join a branch of the academy run by Colomer in Dakar, Senegal.
For the minute percentage of kids who make the final cut -- 23 will stay in
Qatar out of more than 500,000 13-year-olds to 15-year-olds tested this year
-- Aspire Football Dreams is designed to be the fast track to superstardom.
But that small group is not the only faction that appreciates the Qataris'
efforts. Aspire has drawn attention and praise in the closed and somewhat
mysterious inner circle of international soccer's elite.
"Aspire has a balanced plan for youth development, which supports education
and sport for Qatar-based and scholarship students from the developing world
," FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on his first visit to the academy in
2008. "This is making a very important contribution."
A FIFA spokesman declined a request by ESPN.com to elaborate on Blatter's
comments, saying FIFA had no direct role in the program. But through its
Football Dreams project, Aspire has quickly assumed a relatively significant
position in the youth development projects of a small group of FIFA member
federations around the world. It's an exclusive and rather eclectic club of
countries scattered throughout the developing world, with few clear common
ties.
So Football Dreams stands out not just because it throws money around to
pluck prospects from the developing world. Six of the 15 programs are in
countries represented on FIFA's all-power 24-man executive committee. That,
along with a lack of a clear country selection process in terms of where the
program puts down roots, gives you some of the first clues as to how the
benefits of Football Dreams have been used around the world in a clever --
and legal -- bid to market Qatar and, perhaps, subtly influence the vote for
the 2022 World Cup bid.
By most accounts, Aspire Football Dreams has been a resounding success in
Africa. Working in relatively remote areas, the program has discovered
players who have gone on to join the national programs of several African
youth sides. During its short existence, Football Dreams has produced
members of Ghana's 2009 under-20 World Cup champion team, Nigeria's 2009
under-17 World Cup runners-up, and South Africa's current under-17 team.
To further cooperation with the local soccer infrastructure in the countries
in which it works, Aspire makes a point of working directly through
national federations to develop scouting infrastructure and player pools at
the youth level.
"There's no money for this sort of thing in Guatemala or Africa," said
Silvia Carazo, head of a marketing and publicity firm contracted to run the
program in Guatemala. "The project is realized through each of the
federations nationally, but the money and budgeting of the project come from
outside and are put in private hands. But this project only works with the
backing of the federation, and the Qataris work closely with them."
But Aspire's motivations to find talent in places such as Guatemala and
Thailand are less obvious. Oddly for a soccer talent search of limited scope
, Aspire's country selection process seems to place little value on a nation
's history of producing international soccer players.
Besides producing some average soccer, what Guatemala and Thailand do have
in common is representation on the FIFA executive committee.
[+] EnlargeMessi
Karim Jaafar/AFP/Getty Images
Lionel Messi spoke to Aspire Africa Football Dreams finalists in Doha in
January 2008.
Program locations might not always make sense from a soccer standpoint, but
if Aspire's goals include influencing FIFA's highest body, football Dreams
has established a beachhead in all the places where it makes the most sense.
Among program sites are six developing countries including Guatemala,
Paraguay and Thailand with representation on the executive committee. Brazil
and Argentina, where scouting networks are perhaps more developed than
anywhere else in the world, are the only executive committee seat-holding
countries in South Asia, Latin America or Africa without a Football Dreams
project. But Paraguay, one of the smallest South American nations in terms
of population, is home to a recently opened program; it's also residence to
longtime CONMEBOL President Nicolas Leoz, an executive committee member who
was widely believed to be instrumental in shepherding the South American
block of votes to Qatar 2022.
Although the talent search in countries such as Guatemala has produced few
results -- no Guatemalan has yet earned a permanent place at the academy in
Doha -- Aspire's close work with host national federations has done more
than turn up prospects. Football Dreams is still a valuable publicity and
branding exercise, ensuring that key members of international football's
managing elite around the world recognize Qatar's contributions to the
development of the game in their countries.
"[Qatar] has taken an interest in countries like Guatemala," said Felipe
Gomez, Football Dreams project liaison at the Guatemalan Football Federation
. "It's good for the kids, it's good for the federation, and it's good for
relationships among footballing communities everywhere. There are people at
all levels of Guatemalan soccer that have benefited from this project: kids,
coaches, local organizers. It leaves a very good impression. [The Qataris]
have reached out and we've happily received them to work with us, of course."
In theory, FIFA executive committee members are independent individuals not
affiliated with their country's national association. In practice, members
such as Guatemalan Rafael Salguero, who, according to sources in Guatemalan
soccer, before the World Cup vote told confidants that the U.S. was low on
his list for 2022, normally have deeply entrenched ties and a commitment to
foster the well-being of the game in their country, especially where youth
development is concerned. Assistance that furthers those aims does not go
unnoticed.
Given that Football Dreams operates in some of the world's poorer countries,
it's little surprise that Aspire representatives frequently use the words "
development," "opportunity" and "humanitarian" to describe the initiative.
But while there's little doubt that Football Dreams provides benefits for
the countries it works in, the program has its critics, too. If Football
Dreams is to be judged as a humanitarian project, for example, development
practitioners would be very disappointed by its cost effectiveness and
transparency. Exact budgets are strictly confidential, but it is clear that
there's a lot of money at play for an end result that amounts to a few dozen
high-end high school scholarships.
You can get a good sense of how Aspire's program plays out at ground level -
- the pluses and minuses -- in Guatemala.
"We bring all 50 finalists to stay in Guatemala City for three days, with
everything paid for," Carazo said. "They are all given uniforms, balls, and
they get special training. Nike provides all the gear and equipment for the
fields; they're a huge sponsor of this project as well. Then the three who
are selected, along with all the program staff from the country, go to Qatar
for the final trial next year, all expenses paid."
Some of Guatemala's top club teams are not huge fans of the project, either.
Officials at two Guatemalan clubs, who preferred not to be identified for
this story because of pending dealings with Football Dreams program
participants, expressed doubt that the project's primary goal was to give
underprivileged kids an opportunity since the clubs' interest in
participating and even signing some of the participants was rebuffed.
Gomez, the federation's representative, said local teams were interested in
some of the project participants, but they were discouraged from interfering
with Football Dreams.
"A few of the local teams tried to come in and contact some of the players,"
Gomez said. "We made sure that the families and kids did what was in their
best interest, and followed through with the opportunity in Qatar."
A representative from one large club in the capital, who requested anonymity
, pointed out that the program in Guatemala included several tryouts in the
capital, infringing on the clubs' primary recruiting grounds and conflicting
with Aspire's stated goal of helping players without access to conventional
scouting structures. But this person also said that despite the grievances,
the club preferred not to give an official statement about the Aspire
program, adding that the club's board of directors had a "clear
understanding of the incentives of the program to [the Guatemalan football]
federation."
Then there's the gray issue of national allegiance for those accepted to the
program in Qatar. With riches to spare, Qatar has created a bit of a niche
for itself in terms of importing world-class athletes. Generally Qatari
citizenship is nearly impossible to acquire -- foreigners must live in Qatar
for 25 years, speak Arabic and relinquish other citizenship to be eligible
for consideration for a Qatari passport. But the monarchy is free to grant
citizenship as it pleases, and in recent years a diverse group of athletes
has been nationalized to compete under the Qatari flag, including Kenyan
steeplechasers, Chinese chess players and Bulgarian weightlifters.
Although nationalizing soccer players under FIFA rules is far more
complicated than changing national allegiance in many other sports,
suspicion has followed that Football Dreams could mask a talent search meant
to boost the Qatari national soccer team, currently ranked 113th in the
world. Simple math reveals that if the classes of 13-year-old to 15-year-old
prospects pan out, those players would be in their primes come 2022.
[+] EnlargeQatar
Clive Rose/Getty Images
Chief FIFA inspector Harold Mayne-Nicholls is shown a design for one of the
proposed World Cup stadiums by technical director Jasir Al-Jamal at the
Aspire sports complex in September in Qatar.
In fact, if the program director's rhetoric is any clue, building the
national team pool might well have been an auxiliary goal at the onset of
the Football Dreams program, though it's not something those affiliated with
the program are willing to talk about now.
"When making agreements, we are not requiring them to play for Qatar,"
Aspire sports director Andreas Bleicher told reporters two years ago in
Africa. "We leave it up to them. A player might be here for five years, and
if he wants to play for Qatar, it is upon the player concerned."
Several international Aspire students have since represented their countries
of birth, and the recruiting rhetoric has been toned down considerably. The
Football Dreams website now includes a phrase explicitly stating that the
goal of the program is not to recruit players for Qatar. But at least one
international Aspire graduate, Daniel Goma of Guinea, has recently been
called into camp with the Qatari side -- according to FIFA rules, no player
can play for a national team, even in a friendly, without citizenship -- and
his international future would seem to lie with the Annabi.
Aspire's efforts might or might not help Qatar on the field in 2022. But
initiatives to reach out to the world of international soccer aren't limited
to programs to benefit development on the field. Earlier this year, the
Guatemalan under-17 team and a number of federation officials made the long
trip to the Middle East for some friendly matches at Aspire. Their opponent
was the very international team this year's select three prospects hope to
join. Other federations from around the world have enjoyed similar trips.
Guatemalan federation officials preferred not to divulge how, or by whom,
such a long trip was paid for, but what is clear is that while Qatar's
victory in the voting for 2022 World Cup hosting rights came as a shock to
many, the result came as little surprise to the soccer intelligentsia in
this CONCACAF member country.
"What Qatar wants, Josep [Colomer] always says, is to be seen as a powerful
nation in the world," Carazo said. "I think they've begun to achieve that
with the World Cup announcement. Before, no one in Guatemala had heard of
Qatar; now we know, with Football Dreams, what Qatar is all about."
After Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup, the knee-jerk reaction was to
suspect the worst. The U.S., among others, had existing stadiums and a much
larger economy, would produce more revenue and seemed to have everything in
place. U.S. Soccer declined a request to comment on the Football Dreams
program, saying it wasn't its place.
While the U.S. put together what FIFA called the most technically sound bid
for 2022, Qataris and their proxies were quietly at work in the home
countries of many of the FIFA executive committee members. There, they found
ways to serve federations in the developing world in practical, even
commendable programs that seem to have won many friends and influenced a lot
of people at all levels of the soccer world. This might be especially true
since Football Dreams' mission nicely dovetails with FIFA's recent emphasis
on using the game to assist the developing world and create a positive
social impact.
"This was a wonderful opportunity to see Aspire and to discuss the important
role of sport in youth development and education," Blatter said on his
visit to Aspire in 2008. "The essence of football is education, because it
teaches teamwork, discipline and respect for your peers and your competitors
. The fact that Aspire has been able to combine both education and sport in
one institution is remarkable."
Perhaps just as remarkable is the manner in which the small country of Qatar
has created a place for itself on the international soccer map. The Aspire
Football Dreams program is perhaps the best and certainly the most elaborate
example of that process, in all likelihood contributing to Qatar's
ultimately successful quest to host a World Cup.
Around the world, at many different levels, the Football Dreams program has
helped provide the blueprint for kids to turn dreams into reality. But it's
also helped lay the foundation for Qatar to achieve the biggest dream of all
-- hosting a World Cup tournament. |
