Students and Aspire Academy officials pose for a photograph during the awards ceremony of the Goalkeeper External Potential Programme.
DOHA: The Aspire Academy-run Goalkeeper External Potential Programme (GEPP) held an awards ceremony on Wednesday evening to celebrate the young goalkeepers who took part in this year’s programme and mark the conclusion of Programme’s activities this year with the distribution of congratulatory graduation certificates.
Running since 2014, The GEPP is an annual programme organised by the Aspire Academy Football Department in collaboration with the Qatar Football Association and the country’s top 18 sports clubs.
Fifteen goalkeepers from various sports clubs were awarded certificates for taking part in this year’s programme, including: Yousef El Sherif, Saleh Hamad, Abdullah Haidar, Abdulmajeed N K, Yousef Ahmed Mohammed, Hamad Majed, Ali Asghar Abadai, Abdulrahman Nasser Haidar, Adnan Ali, Abdulrahman Atef, Farid Ibrahim, Saeed Essa, Ghanem Mohammed Ahmed, Ali Asfar and Abdulrahman Nasser Al Sheiba.
Speaking on the side-lines of the event, Inaki Ulloa, Elite Teams Football Coordinator at Aspire Academy, said: “The programme’s main objective is to nurture and develop goalkeepers in Qatar so they can represent their clubs and country proudly in major tournaments. This programme offers these young goalkeepers a platform to grow, thanks to the joint efforts of everyone involved. The programme is a testament to Aspire Academy’s fruitful partnership with various local sporting organisations and clubs. Parents also play a vital role in this programme, because they motivate their children to attend the sessions.”
He added: “The programme mainly invests its time and energy on improving the performance of goalkeepers still in the developmental phase. This year, we had goalkeepers within the age range between 10-16 who showed great promise.”
Aspire Academy’s Football Programme is recognised as one of the strongest in the world in terms of detection and selection of talent as well as training, competition and evaluation of adolescent players.
The training philosophy of the Academy is tailored to the capabilities, talents and goals of Qatar as a footballing nation and follows a strategy that is geared towards the development of the individual player, who should be able to know what the game demands in any given situation.
