In my last blog article I told you the story of the last home game of Jorge Wilsterman. The current title contender of Bolivia’s league and main club in Cochabamba.
Actually since I arrived here I started to work with Aurora : the other big club of the city. The rivalry is not comparable with a Boca-River in Argentina but you can still feel that people are really proud to defend their colours.
With my colleague Louis we go to their as beautiful as huge training centre every morning from Monday to Wednesday.
They have three 11-a-side grass pitches including one reserved for the first team with stands, a 9-a-side pitch and a small 5-a-side pitch just beside the beach football area. At the entrance the club’s store and the offices and after the changing rooms : the gym. All of that surrounded by trees and greenery. By talking to the club’s employees it is quite unique in the country.
At 8:30am the Under 7 kids are the first to run through the entrance door with their member’s card in their hand. They join Armando, the emblematic coach of the soccer school, for a one hour session. Cristian, the manager of the soccer school, is proud to tell us than Aurora is the biggest club of the city in terms of adherents. Actually they have all categories represented from Under 7 to Under 19 in the soccer school (kids come to play for fun), the club’s team (main team of the category playing the league) and “Pasion celeste” (the second team of the category). It represents more or less 800 young players ! Cristain is delighted to tell that they invited some disadvantaged kids to come and join the teams without paying any fee. Aurora is definitely doing a great social job in the city !
Roberto Perez, the first team coach, has been inviting us to follow his sessions from the first day. Louis and I are free to ask as much questions as we want and we even took part once to the warm-up rondo of one of their session. This team plays in the local Cochabamba league and the first team in the table goes to the playoffs for the national first division. They’ve been battling for that first place for the whole spring and they sadly failed at the end of the tournament against Tiquipaya another neighbourhood of the city. Mr Perez even invited us to the away game against their rival. We took place at the front of the team bus with the latin music songs as a warm-up. The return was a bit quieter after having lost this important game 3-2.
On my side, after having passed first weeks to watch and observe different teams training sessions I started to deliver my first exercises to the Aurora’s kids. What a pleasure to coach this full-of-attention players ! I was very surprised of how much they are keen to learn and improve. After some sessions the Bolivians coaches showed some interest as well to the exercises I prepared. The coaching cultural difference makes every discussion about football very intense and interesting. This year I realised how lucky I am to share experiences with coaches all around the world. And I have to say that was one of my biggest benefit of this gap year : thank you Arsenal ! Thank you Aurora !