CEBU CITY—The impending downpour of a dim Sunday afternoon over the Cebu City Sports Center finally came in as slow and heavy, then torrential. In the grayness of the driving rain, however, in the middle of the field now cleared of people, a bright sunshine of a scene came through.
As the crowd in the open multisport complex scrambled to take shade, around 80 young football players, together with coaches, remained unmoved in the middle of the pitch. They were wrapping up the final session of the second Milo FCB (FC Barcelona) Road to Barcelona Philippines Invitational Camp with a song taught to them by the FCB Youth Academy coaches.
“Ole-le, Ola-la, ser del Barça és el millor que hi ha! [Ole-le, Ola-la, being a Barça fan is the best (thing) there is!],” sang the drenched campers with the biggest smiles on their faces, jumping up and down on wet grass while wiping their eyes dry.
Cebu is this year’s Philippine venue of the global football grassroots development program between Milo and FC Barcelona, where a country’s top collection of football players ages 10 to 12 years old participate in a world-class training camp run by coaches of the prestigious FCB Youth Academy, which produced FCB stars such as Andres Iniesta, Puyol and Lionel Messi. The chosen players from the camp will get to represent the country’s delegation in the FCB Training Camp and Ultimate Experience in Barcelona, Spain, in November, which include a training session with an FCB legend and watching a live FCB game at Camp Nou.
According to Willy de Ocampo, vice president and business unit manager for Nestlé Philippines, the multinational behind the Milo brand, Cebu was made the host of this year’s camp with the intention to tap into a broader base of football players from all over the country.
“On our second Road to Barcelona, we wanted to extend this world-class opportunity to more kids in the country, particularly the football hotbed that is the Visayas region,” de Ocampo said. “Milo and FCB both believe that it is through sports and the values learned through them that we truly become champions in life. We are very pleased and grateful to have had this chance to help advance the local football scene here through this global partnership.”
This year’s local camp welcomed around 160 players from Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Davao, Dumaguete, Koronadal, Masbate, Negros Occidental and Metro Manila. The selection process involved the participation of nationwide football associations, which were asked to nominate local prospects.
One of athletes who participated in the recent Cebu camp was 12-year-old Donjie Alimanggo of Koronadal. A fan of midfield maestro Iniesta, Donjie entered the world of football after being discovered by a coach in his hometown who saw him running in an oval track. The coach asked him if he wanted to join a football team, and he’s never looked back since.
“After po nun, sure na po agad ako na football talaga ang gusto kong gawin,” Donjie said. “Masaya po kasi ’yung teamwork and kailangan po ng respect, at ’yun din po ’yung natutunan ko dito sa mga coaches sa camp.”
Another participant was Carlos Bongocan from Cagayan de Oro. Unlike Donjie, Carlos’s exposure to football came in much earlier, when he was four years old, because his dad, Dennis, carried an advocacy to teach less-fortunate kids about the sport.
“We don’t go to the mall because we enjoy teaching football very much, just seeing kids enjoying the training and the game,” the elder Bongocan said. “My wife even cooks for the kids for our training sessions.”
From the pool of Road to Barcelona young athletes, Milo Philippines, the visiting FCB Youth Academy coaches and the Cebu Football Association (CFA) will select seven standouts centered on an interesting mechanic: only 30 percent of the criteria will be based on skill, while the remaining 70 percent will be based on values.
When Milo tied up last year with FC Barcelona for a four-year global partnership, de Ocampo said the move was born out of a shared set of values— the kind of values that do not end in sports but extend to life—that there’s more to playing than winning, and, more important, the traits of HEART, an acronym for humility, effort, ambition, respect and teamwork, which Milo and FCB believe are what make up a champion.
The announcement of the lucky seven who will make it into the 2018 Philippine delegation to Spain will be made later this month, and they will fly out to Barcelona in the second week of November, together with the identified players from the other Milo markets worldwide.
Part of the Philippine delegation in the inaugural trip last year was 11-year-old Cebuano Ethan Roxas. Milo Philippines Consumer Marketing Manager Robbie de Vera said Ethan is mature beyond his years, and the trip to Barcelona helped a lot in that development. “The exposure abroad really helped build his confidence apart from his skills.”
For his part, Ethan, who learned about his selection last year from his mom while he was out playing football in school with a bottle cap, called the whole experience “fun and enjoyable.”
“It helped me with my values and my skills,” he said, adding that the most memorable part of the 12-day Barcelona trip was meeting former FCB defender and current Sporting Director Eric Abidal.
As far as this year’s crop of talent is concerned, de Vera said athletes who’ll be missing out on the plane to Barcelona shouldn’t feel any less proud, because with the free, world-class training, free jerseys, free equipment and free exposure to the technology of FC Barcelona that they received, that experience in itself is value enough. “The actual trip to Barcelona is just icing on the cake.”
Meanwhile, the two FCB Youth Academy coaches who headed the camp this year, with the help of CFA coaches, rolled out every football drill, theoretical lesson and values formation for the purpose of instilling to the young athletes FC Barcelona’s team system, culture and shared values of HEART, bannered by the message of #TEAMMAKESME.
“We not only want to teach them the right way to play, but also want to teach them the right values to live by,” said FCB Youth Academy Coach Jordi Aguilar. His colleague Albert Batalla joined him in the camp.
De Ocampo, the Nestlé Philippines executive, said the focus for the Road to Barcelona program in the coming years will be the expansion of its appeal to invite even more children to get into sports, because they believe that sports is a teacher of values in life.
“That’s the whole point of this camp: You learn some skills, yes, but what you learn more is the experience that will fuel you to reach for your dreams, that you can go for it.”