Sunday 08 / June / 2025
Barcelona: Teams from Muscat Football Academy (MFA) are through to the knockout stages of the Bronze Division of the Junior World Cup after both their teams sealed progress when they drew their day’s matches.
While the under-9s roared to a 3-0 lead against Catalan club CE Constanti, before conceding a last-minute equaliser deep into the second half, the under-11s showed character to draw level with South Korean outfit ENKFC.
The under-9s of MFA have now been drawn against local outfit Vila Seca, and will face them in the mountain town of Mont Roig. The under-11s will play Costa Daurada, who draw players from the region in which the Mundalito – Spanish for ‘little World Cup’ – is being held.
Ahmed Al Busaidi, captain for the under-11s, said: “This is my third year in Mundalito and I think I’ve gotten used to it over the years. I think we’re doing really good because we’ve gotten to the Bronze Cup and have a chance of winning. I think we should just do what we have been doing in our past matches, just show aggression, all together as a team. Everything we do well, we do as a team.”
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In addition, coach Mark Oliver, who also spearheaded MFA’s recent successes at the Manchester City Cup in Abu Dhabi which ended just as the Mundialito began, said this was an experience any young footballer would treasure.
“For our kids, coming from Oman, this is a unique experience and you can’t really emulate this in the Middle East,” he said. “For our kids to come here and rub shoulders with Borussia Dortmund, Liverpool and the other big clubs of the world, they get to interact with each other and see how these kids behave. It’s just a great experience in general. Winning isn’t everything, but we hope we can develop them as players first and foremost, they can learn from these matches in which they are playing, and we’re not expecting them to win every match.
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“For example, we played Las Palmas, a Spanish Premier team, and we kinda knew how the result would go, but sometimes you can learn more about a player from a defeat about the kid as an individual, about his mentality in general, and what he’s like when he’s up against it,” he added.
“Especially for an Arab kid, to go into this mentality can be difficult, because here, things aren’t given to them so easily in terms of what you get in the Middle East in terms of the standards, but when they come here, it’s a real eye-opener for them.
“The mentality of these other kids, the European kids, who have been brought up in this football environment, their families support the club, the mentality has been driven into them from a young age. The importance is to play for the badge,” explained Oliver. “Hopefully, at Muscat Football Academy, in the years to come, we can make this badge mean something to families and kids in Muscat.”
The Mundialito is a FIFA-approved tournament that is held every year, and features youth outfits from some of the best clubs in the world, as well as leading global academies. Examples of clubs that have made it to this year’s tournament include Spanish teams FC Barcelona, Atletico de Madrid, Valencia CF, Sevilla FC, UD Levante, Gimnastic de Tarragona, UD Las Palmas, Deportivo La Coruna and many others.
In addition, Portuguese clubs FC Porto and Sporting Clube de Portugal are both present, as are Greek club PAOK Thessaloniki and Cypriot side APOEL Nicosia. English giants Liverpool, Turkish clubs Galatasaray, Besiktas, Fenerbahce and Altinordu are all present, German team Borussia Dortmund and Italian champions Juventus, among others.
