First Training

I just had my first football training session at Blackburn Rovers. First of all, I would like to mention how fabulous the pitches are at the training centre. There were numerous flat grass pitches where we trained on. Not something you can easily get in Hong Kong. Another difference compared to Hong Kong is the seriousness of developing the youth players here. Diets and gym workouts are specific to the player's needs and many of these players are full-time players. They eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the centre and just play football during the day. Also, the team watched some video replay of a game they played and the coach would explain what needed to be fixed. Another thing that doesn't happen at the HKFC.

Today, we trained with the U-18 although this was only for a short while since James, the other person from Hong Kong who came to Blackburn, and I did some personal training as well. We warmed up with some jogging, stretching and five against two passing with the team and then moved on to do some shooting, and passing trainings on our own. The shooting practice first involved controlling a lifted pass and then shooting. Then, we were supposed to control and pass the ball from the lifted pass with one touch and then James or myself would shoot at goal. Finally, we did some shooting after passing to the coach in the middle and then shooting first time or after one touch to put us through. After that, we did some passing training where both of us were behind separate football mannequins and then we would pass the ball to each other from the left and right side of the mannequin. We also did some passing from side to side where we could place ourselves on an angle and then control the ball with our back foot and then passing. This involved looking behind our shoulders which is an important part in football. Finally, we finished off by doing some 1 on 1 dribbling against each other.

The training was of course brilliant and I learned a lot in quite a short time. Not just in football skills but about Blackburn Rovers in general. In my opinion, my performance was the best I could possibly do, but there's still a lot of improvement needed to match the players here. Hopefully, I will be able to learn a lot for these two weeks and improve my performance.