“LOOK AT EDERSON OF MANCHESTER CITY. When he came to me he was just a lad from the favelas, too scared to leave his own penalty area. Now he takes bigger risks than anybody in the Premier League. Bernardo Silva is top as well. We sold him to Monaco and after a few weeks he was speaking French on TV, he’s an example. This club gives the boys life skills to grow.”

Seagull squawks were drowned out by the demands of Luís Nascimento, head coach of the under-15 team who have been crowned national champions four times in the past six seasons. I was at Benfica’s impressive Caixa Futebol Campus that sits on the banks of the Tagus River, a 20-minute ferry ride away from the south side of Lisbon.

Some fellow by the name Eusébio opened the Seixal-based football centre that houses 65 children from around the globe with dreams of reaching the lofty heights that the game can offer them. The factory boasts nine pitches, 20 dressing rooms, two auditoriums, three state-of-the-art gymnasiums, and the crème de la crème, a ‘360S simulator’ in a lab where players are directed to on a weekly basis to work on their technique, going through analysis, nutritional and psychological tests too.

The simulator is like the Footbonaut, first seen at Borussia Dortmund, however this one has robotic-like players that move along the walls of each side of the cage and players are tested on their reaction speeds, vision and technical execution when aiming for the moving targets after controlling the ball inside the 10-foot circle.

“Youth football is a fundamental area for Benfica, it represents for us a set of sporting benefits (the club knows the players and the players are identified with the club), social and financial,” says Nascimento. “When referring to the youth football, do not talk exclusively to ‘train’, we refer also to ‘educate’. Our training process also integrates the academic component. The academic performance of our players is monitored and encouraged at all levels.”

Benfica have a partnership with a local school in Seixal that the budding starlets residing on campus are bussed to each morning, with a further 30 more that stay with host families in the surrounding community making the trip. Nascimento continues: “The mission of Benfica’s academy is to guarantee the quality of technical training and educational enrichment of its players, of all age groups, with a focus on the integration into the clubs first team, promoting human values such as respect, responsibility, solidarity, justice and tolerance.”

As I awaited the arrival of the media manager in the training ground reception, members of the under-15 team arrived for their session and not a single player failed to walk across the office to shake my hand, all greeting me with “boa tarde” after signing into the building; not even the duo that were busy making fun of the security guard’s slightly balding hair – all in good fun, of course.

I was immediately struck by the feeling that this was a special place and we were all lucky to be there. Just imagine how special these youngsters felt.

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