Filipino booter joins LaLiga Academy
MANILA, Philippines – This is fantastic news for Philippine football!
We will now have a representative in the LaLiga Academy for the first time during the 2023/24 season!
Rafael Garcia, a 16-year-old Filipino defender from Manila, will participate in this exclusive training program at the ESC LaLiga & NBA Centre in Madrid.
The prestigious LaLiga Academy project, aimed at athletes between the ages of 13 and 18, is designed to enhance the development of their abilities, focusing on excellence and the integral development of their performance in both the academic and sporting spheres, studying at a school integrated into the Centre and training under the LaLiga Methodology for a whole season.
I planned to visit this facility last September when I was in Madrid but the schedules unfortunately didn’t match.
This unique complex now has a residence with a capacity of 450 people, two football fields, a gymnasium, a clinic and an international school equipped with a library, laboratory and study rooms. In this first season — 2022-23 — 36 players of 24 different nationalities joined the program.
Garcia plays center-back and right-back, and has trained at Makati FC, GOM Football Center of Excellence, Southampton Academy and Stallion Laguna FC.
“I love football because it teaches me how to work hard, how to work as part of a team and, above all, about the passion of the game. It has a lot of values that I can transfer to my daily life. Football is a way of life. Everything you learn on the pitch you need off the pitch,” said Garcia, who was already able to train at the ESC LaLiga & NBA Centre during a few immersion days in April.
“What I like most about the ESC LaLiga & NBA Centre is probably the football pitch: it's where the magic of football happens. At LaLiga Academy I will be able to enjoy meeting new teammates from different countries. I will discover new cultures. I'm looking forward to playing football and studying with them,” he added.
"The development of interest in football in Southeast Asia is evolving exponentially, especially in the Philippines, helping to reach new profiles of young players from all over the world. It is therefore a privilege for LaLiga Academy to have Rafael, who has shown great promise and we hope that next season we can help him develop a series of skills and values through a unique sporting and educational experience," said Juan Florit, head of LaLiga Football Department.
LaLiga Academy was the first annual program launched by LaLiga in Spain, and joins the more than 550 grassroots football sports projects in more than 43 countries that have been implemented since 2015. Brought together within LaLiga Grassroots, the project launched in 2021 to promote global grassroots football. LaLiga is a pioneer among the major competitions in that it has created a network of permanent academies based on its own training system, which is especially valued at international level, forged from the wealth of knowledge accumulated in Spanish grassroots football.
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