Interesting article

02/01/2006 15:03

Milan Invests In Brazilian Youngsters
AC Milan will kick off 2006 with hundreds of Brazilian hopefuls, although at the moment they won’t be playing alongside Kaká, Dida, Cafú and Serginho as the offer is only open to children from 8 to 13 years of age at the "Milan Junior Camp” that takes place in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

The scheme has a two-pronged intent: to reinforce AC Milan’s profile in Brazil and discover tomorrow’s star players today. Milan marketing director Michele Ferraris stressed that "Revealing new talents isn’t the priority right now, but could be a useful future spin-off”.

It’s the second time that the camp, started ten years ago and with over 45 countries involved to date, takes place in Brazil. The first stage will be overseen by Milan’s staff, giving way to a second stage that will see Brazilians trained to become coaching assistants and expand the scheme further.

"Our aim is to help train people that will be involved in future Milan projects in Brazil", explained Ferraris, adding that the scheme in the USA has already reached that stage. The third stage is planned to be an agreement with a Brazilian first division team.

This would see cooperation on a grander scale with coaching staff and players being interchanged between Milan and the Brazilian club. At the moment the only country to have attained this level of coordination with Milan is Bulgaria’s Botev.

"We’re still honing the right bases for a future agreement, and our medium-term aim is to offer these types of partnership after the scheme has been successfully operating for a year. For us, size isn’t the crucial issue, so we’re open to joining forces with smaller clubs as long as they share our commitment to this scheme” added Ferraris.

He also revealed that there could be some famous faces involved. " Serginho, for example, has already expressed an interest in the scheme and would like to actively participate – agenda permitting, of course – in the Brazilian scheme.”

Serginho already has some hands-on experience of the "Milan Junior Camp” as his son and nephew participated in the first edition of the scheme in Rio de Janeiro last July. Each year AC Milan takes in about 10-15 youngsters selected from 10,000 candidates worldwide.

Although rags-to-riches stories are hardly common, they do happen, as Ferraris went on to exemplify. "One of them has already signed a professional contract and played for Napoli last year” he remembered. Perhaps future stars will look back on the "Milan Junior Camp” as their leg up into the world of football.

i am glad to hear this. we need to prepare for the future! and brazilian guys play great football. just look at our brazilian players, wonderful if their juniors were to take after them

Yes, this is certainly fantastic news! The only thing that I hope is that there won't be too many foreign players in Milan. I certainly have nothing against foreigners, bt after all Milan is an Italian team....so I love to see Italian players in our team. Of course they must be good enough to play for Milan. If not, then I still prefer to have foreigners in the team.

Yes, this is certainly fantastic news! The only thing that I hope is that there won't be too many foreign players in Milan in the future. I certainly have nothing against foreigners, bt after all Milan is an Italian team....so I love to see Italian players in our team. Of course they must be good enough to play for Milan. If not, then I still prefer to have foreigners in the team.

This is something that will pay huge dividends to this team in the near future. I would have to say that Leonardo has been particularly effective in lobbyng this to the Milan board. I also like the fact that he carries much weight within the Brazilian Football power circles. Rumor has it he was the one who was instrumental in getting Kaka to come to Milan. Great find and great scouting if you ask me.