This weekend Croatia’s capital Zagreb hosted first ever U9 national minifootball team trials. Children born on 2006.and 2007 reacted with great joy participated in this historic event, since this will be youngest national team apearance in any sport in Croatia.
After the trials youngsters will have six training sessions before national team coaches choose the best who will play on a friendly match against Bosnia & Herzegovina on 14th March in Zagreb.
”After some initial talks with Croatia Minifootball Federation president Mr.Bruno Alpeza and his support, we started to talk with various schools and clubs to participate in this project. All of them was thrilled, along with parents and of course youngsters. We’re proud so see them here on this trials and will be even more proud to see them play for the national team. This event will be just an introduction to youngsters U9 Zagreb championship which will start on 21st, one week after our friendly against Bosnia and over 11 teams/clubs will participate. Many thanks to Bosnia Minifootball Association Mr.Rajković who supported this idea from the start and decided to come in Zagreb and be our guest during two days starting from Friday. I wish also to thank to my coaches who done excellent job.” Explained Matija Drušković, Croatia U9 head coach.
Croatian minifootball President Bruno Alpeza was thrilled:”This will be an historic event, on Saturday we’ll organize youngest national team match in any sport. I use this oportunity to congratulate our head coach Mr.Drušković and thank to all parents who had faith in this project from the start. Thanks to good relationship between Croatian Minifootball Federation and Bosnian Minifootball Association it wasn’t hard to arrange the event and I want to thank Mr.Rajković, their president, who was our partner in this event from the start. We already look forward to see youngsters playing for the national team and having one memory which they will cherish for the lifetime. We’re proud to be part of project which is giving this youngster added value and probably making them better players in the future and final result will not be important. Thanks to all who supported this idea and we also look forward for the start of Zagreb U9 championship next week with over 200 youngsters participating,“ he said.
The match will start at 12 CET (2007.team) and 15 CET (2006.team) with Croatia national Sport TV (SPTV) coverage.
Croatia staff
Head coach: Matija Drušković,
Coaches: Luka Kržak, Dario Horvat, Jurica Glavaš, Josip Ačkar,
Goalkeeper coach: Mario Kirin