We take a look back at what was a superb March for Le Gym’s football school.

ON THE PITCH

At the start of the month, a large section of OGC Nice’s football school – accompanied by its technical director, Axel Mazerbourg – headed to Turin and more specifically to the Juventus Training Center in Vinovo, with the aim of this trip to Italy’s Piedmont region being to pit the club’s U8s, U9s and U10s and U11s against other teams in their age categories and to provide the youth coaches with a series of interesting discussions.

Further encounters between these clubs, who have increasingly been collaborating with each other in the last two years, are already set to take place next season in both Nice and Turin.

Our U10s and U11s won all of their league fixtures during the trip, including a brilliant derby victory for our U11As over AS Monaco.

In the age categories below, our players took on Parisian clubs including ESBF Bouafle, FC Nogent and Paris Acasa.

Finally, just last Wednesday, our U11s faced a team from Los Angeles’s BA Soccer Academy, which is run by former Le Gym striker Georges Ba.

off the pitch

Together with the club’s pre-academy teams, all of our U11 players attended an information session where they were introduced to the sports-study programme at Nice’s Parc Impérial secondary school.

For the last two seasons, entry into this elite pathway has been exclusively reserved for the players at Les Rouge et Noir’s football school, thereby highlighting the quality of the work carried out by the club’s youth coaches as well as the faith shown by the school’s pre-academy section, which pays close attention to the progress of our young Aiglons.

THE MONTH’S STANDOUT PERFORMANCES

What a fantastic Easter weekend it was for our football school, with all of its teams shining across departmental, regional, national and international tournaments.

A special mention has to go out to Dylan Diringer’s and Nabil Tisba’s U8As as well as to Déniz Öndeyer’s and Stevie Idoménée’s U11As.

The U8s came second in the prestigious Brussels Football European Cup, losing on penalties to RSC Anderlecht in the final after an exceptional performance saw them come back from 4-1 down at half-time to draw 5-5 in the dying seconds of the match.

Going into that final, our pichouï had won all of their group games as well as beating RFC Seraing 5-0 in the last 32, AFC Ajax 3-1 in the last 16, Luton Town FC 3-2 in the quarter-finals and Sevilla FC 2-1 in the semi-finals.

The U11s, meanwhile, finished third in the highly coveted Universal Youth Cup Torneo Internazionale Apuane, which brings together every Serie A and Serie B team as well as a number of foreign sides on the basis of one club per country, apart from France, which was the only foreign country to enter two teams: Le Gym and PSG.

After breezing through the group stage, our young Aiglons ran out 1-0 winners over AS Roma in the last 16 before beating Partizan Belgrade 2-0 in the quarter-finals.

In the opening stages of their semi-final against AC Milan, Les Niçois conceded for the only time in the tournament but would then go on to dominate the encounter and eventually equalise before going out on penalties. In the third-place play-off, though, they would still manage to get the better of Paris Saint-Germain to claim a place on the podium.

iN PHOTOS

 

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