Action during the Aspire Zone Foundation Tri-Series football tournament.
Aspire Academy’s U-16, U-17, and U-18 football teams have emerged victorious in the latest edition of the Tri-Series that featured popular German club Eintracht Frankfurt, and for the first time Cultural y Deportiva Leonesa, the Aspire Zone Foundation owned football team from Spain.
This year’s strong performance from the Aspire Academy teams follows the Qatar national team’s successful qualification to the AFC U19 Championship which is taking place in Indonesia next year, with the majority of Qatar’s players, coaches and medical teams from Aspire.
During the fifth round of the international Tri-Series, Aspire Academy’s talented young-athletes achieved some impressive results to top their respective age groups.
They dominated the games against Cultural y Deportiva Leonesa and won without conceding a single goal in every age group.
The games against the German Bundesliga club were much closer with only one goal making the difference in the games of the U-18s and U-17s.
In one of the most tightly contested matches, Aspire Academy and Eintracht Frankfurt’s U-16 teams went to a penalty shoot-out to decide the winner after their match ended 2-2 in regular time.
The Aspire Academy players showed serious mental strength throughout the match and managed to defeat their strong German opponents from the spot.
The number of teams that have visited Aspire Academy to compete in the Tri-Series tournament has grown steadily since it was launched in 2012.
Last year, a total of 32 clubs and associations participated in the tournament.
Participating teams have included major football clubs such as Liverpool FC (England), Paris Saint Germain (France), Ajax Amsterdam (Netherlands), Zenit St. Petersburg (Russia), Nagoya Grampus Eight (Japan), Esperance de Tunis (Tunisia) and Palmeiras (Brazil) as well as national youth teams from Canada and Denmark.
