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Sports Features of Saturday, 1 May 2010

Source: Prince Osei Bonsu

International Football Development Academ

THE OPPORTUNITY TO SOCCER PROFESSIONALISM

The International Football Development Academy (iFDA) is set in Cheshire, 20 minutes
from Manchester and the airport. We are a residential based soccer and sports
education academy running 4 one week courses. The content of the course is an
amalgamation of different clubs coaching programmes including Man Utd, Arsenal,
Juventus, Barcelona and Watford, providing a pioneering new syllabus.
We give every participant the chance to reach personal excellence by providing:-

• the opportunity to partake in our unique Assessment Centre
• the opportunity to make friends with other players from around the world
• the chance to sign for professional clubs using the iFDA Academy Showcase
• the opportunity to experience the soccer holiday of a lifetime

We implement a level of coaching which is equal to that of top level professional
academies in England whilst being one of the first private academies in the world to
provide children with a realistic opportunity to train and achieve a trial at a
professional club. We provide a unique opportunity to be assessed in all five areas
of youth development, technical, tactical, social, physical and psychological at our
assessment centre, and offer a unique route for players into university for graduate
careers, or sports related fields. We also offer CV advice, advice on scholarships
to international Universities and advice on applying to English Universities. We are
the only private academy in the world to offer an aftercare development programme to
aid development when players leave our courses.
We employ some of the best coaches of youth soccer in the world. We have only
employed professional coaches who enjoy having good laughs and hold the minimum of
their UEFA B license. All our coaches have worked at professional clubs including AC
Milan, Liverpool, New York Red Bulls and Arsenal. We even have some secret special
celebrity guest coaches coming along.... r.

Alongside the core soccer training we initiate a full classroom programme including
match analysis, hydration, psychology, nutrition, physiology, proprioception, video
analysis and age specific conditioning. Perhaps one of our most unique features is
our evening activities. At The iFDA we believe it is imperative to gauge work to
rest ratios appropriately to maximize and sustain performance and so our evening
social programme is geared around resting, in a fun manner. This includes World Cup
matches played onto lecture theatre screens, internet with Apple Mac suites 3v3
street football tournaments, 3D film evenings with popcorn, Playstation Pro
Evolution/FIFA 10 tournaments and many more exciting features.

We have recently confirmed that our boys will be playing several clubs including
Watford academy and their coaches will be scouting in their games. We have a host of
other professional and semi-professional clubs who will be coming in. The matches in
our Academy showcase (which all players will take part in) are 90 minutes long. They
will be filmed by professional sports analysts and each player will receive a copy.

Each morning we meet in the lecture theatre and look at professional teams in a
quick presentation and how they employ certain aspects of the game, such as width,
and depth/shape before going out on to the pitch to train on the aspects we have
looked at. We always warm up to music as recent research published by The University
of Brunel shows how music warm ups can improve performance due to increased neural
action potential propagation. Whilst this is notion is important to us, we ensured
that this is delivered to its potential by employing one of Manchester’s pioneering
music producers to cut and mix all music warm ups according to the intensity and
duration of each mornings warm up. We followed this idea in employing a dance
teacher. Many people acknowledge that Rio Ferdinand, Mark Hughes etc... were once
schooled in dance/ballet as it is perfect for core strengthening, flexibility and
power development. We took this notion and recruited some of the
best dance teachers who have worked for artists such as Kanye West.
We also have our own catering manager/chef at The University of Chester who we are
working with to design the perfect, delicious athletes diet. Of course there will be
occasional treats!

Each player will receive:

• 7 days stay, 6 night’s accommodation
• 3 meals per day plus snacks and drinks, provided by our personal chef
• Full coaching syllabus
• Full age specific conditioning programme, including speed training using sports
science equipment
• Full iFDA training kit
• Off site trip and coach travel to Europe’s largest shopping centre The Trafford
Centre
• The opportunity to play in The Academy Showcase in front of professional scouts
• A full run through at ‘The iFDA Assessment Centre’ including ‘iFDA Player Report’
and feedback session on weeks performance
Age specific classroom seminars on nutrition/hydration/psychology/physiology
• Individual aftercare programme for improvement at home
• DVD of ‘The Academy Showcase’
• Mix CD of warm up music
• Discount voucher for return visit
• Certificates and giveaways

The iFDA is partnered with Calcio Lecco, a professional Italian club, who will be
sending three academy age groups to The iFDA in summer 2010. We are the first
external academy in world football to be used in a consultancy basis to develop
their players. We also have big agents in China, Iceland, and Dubai, Ghana, USA and
across the UK.

Our programme covers all five Long term athlete development points in depth and so
serves as a vehicle to empower and develop young people regardless of ability:
Technical: Helping young players achieve fluency and consistency in motor programme
reproduction.
Tactical: Helping young people achieve understanding of patterns and tactics to
develop the decision making process
Physical: Helping young players understand the demands of the sport on their bodies,
and how well they can adapt to these demands
Psychological: Empowering young people’s attitudes and mental capabilities to
improve positivity, efficacy and confidence
Social: To help young people appreciate the influence that school, friends, family
and environment can have on them and their performance

We are very proud of all our players, check out our website www.ifdauk.co.uk and I
hope to hear from you soon.





Yours in Sport,




Cornelius Trinidad Osabu.

Agent
International Football Development Academy, LLP
www.ifdauk.co.uk
www.cfcnet.co.uk
cornelius@ifdauk.co.uk
+1 347 – 261 – 2874
+233 208 – 422 - 922
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