The Maccabi Tel Aviv International Youth Tournament will begin this coming Friday at Kiryat Shalom and will run until Sunday. Bayer Leverkusen, Red Star Paris and other youth teams will participate in the competition which will be the first of its kind in Israel. Just before the opening whistle, the club’s Performance Director Patrick van Leeuwen discussed the importance of the competition and more:
“Maccabi Tel Aviv is starting to create a culture of tournaments in Israel. We are always aiming to be the best. This is the first edition of the tournament with the purpose of hosting and encouraging more foreign teams to come to Israel for these types of competitions in the future.”
For more information about the tournament and match schedule click here
van Leeuwen continued: “Being the first team in Israel to organize an international tournament, we hope that everything will go smoothly. All of the Academy employees will assist in making this tournament possible while hopefully enjoying good football matches. The Maccabi Youth Academy is doing everything to make our guests and all of the other teams feel welcome while approaching everything as professional as possible. We have to thank the club for making it possible for us to organize it.”
Opportunities the competition affords to the participants and beyond:
“We hope that this will give an opportunity for young Israeli boys to play against top foreign teams while also playing Israeli clubs in a different competition other than the official league. We are very happy with the teams that are participating in the tournament. Bayer Leverkusen will be in Israel for their training camp and we offered them an opportunity to participate in our tournament and therefore this competition will be part of their training camp. Red Star Paris is the second club in Paris, France. The owner of the club has a Jewish background and it’s nice to give these people the opportunity to share their experiences with us. The Israeli teams that will participate played quality football last season and it will be nice to share this experience with those other clubs.”
Leading by example:
“One of our purposes in having this competition is to raise the level of enthusiasm and encourage others in organizing tournaments in Israel. This will be not only an experience here at Maccabi Tel Aviv, but also for other clubs who may follow this initiative in trying to create something international themselves as well.”
Expectations from Maccabi:
“We have to perform well. It’s a different format that we are taking the European U19 format, not like the Israeli youth league where 6 players above 19 can play. We have a lot of talented players that will receive a quality experience by playing in these matches. These kinds of tournaments are different and you need to perform well with the goal of getting a good result in every match and advance. This is also the goal for Maccabi at this tournament.”
