GERMAN football club Borussia Dortmund is taking the first step in making its presence felt back in the country by holding a youth training camp from Oct. 27 to 29 at the Ayala Vermosa Sports Club pitch in Imus, Cavite.
“We want to be involved in training promising young football-playing children in the Philippines the Borussia Dortmund way,” Marius Lorenz, BVB (the initials of the German Club) Asia sports chief, said in a recent press conference at the Matchpoint Sports Bar in Mandaluyong.
Lorenz said the BVB Evonik Football Academy camp will feature age groups from eight to 16-year-olds in the program that will include talent diagnostics and techno-motorical testing to determine the skill levels of the participants.
“To compete in modern football, to compete at the highest level, our DNA is to develop our own talents,” noted Lorenz of Borussia Dortmund’s system that powered it to eight Bundesliga titles, the last in the 2011-2012 season.
“That is what we want to bring from Dortmund to the world, to our international friends,” he said of the BVB Evonik Football Academy which has already staged clinics and set up camps in other Asian countries like Singapore and Japan.
“Like what we have done in Singapore and Japan, we want our partnership in the Philippines to be for the long-term,” said Lorenz, who tapped Ghana coach Ayi Nii Aryee, a former two-time UAAP champion for the UP Maroons, to conduct the camp together with coach Hamed Hajimahdi of Iran.
Lorenz said both will assist German BVB Evonik Football Academy Camp coaches during the camp.
“For the Philippines, we are just beginning to establish our first footprint here,” he added. “Hopefully, it’s just the start.’
Interested participants can contact the BVB Evonik Football Academy Philippines Camp on Facebook or tel. no. +639454782886 for further inquiries.