Fútbol Club Barcelona is bringing its soccer balls to Virginia Beach this summer to conduct a week-long experiment.
The sand soccer branch of the famed Catalan sports club will host its first ever youth training camp on American soil in June at 26th Street and the Oceanfront.
The sessions will be a trial run. If they’re successful, the club will use them as a template for others this side of the Atlantic, according to Dick Whalen, organizer for the camps and the North American Sand Soccer Championships, which are held annually in Virginia Beach.
Barcelona is “one of the top teams on the planet and they’re wanting to spread the sport,” Whalen said.
The team isn’t coming to Coastal Virginia just to do that, however. The day after the clinics end, on June 10, the players will begin defending their North American Sand Soccer Championships crown. Whalen predicted they’ll be victorious in what is the professional bracket of the world’s largest sand soccer tournament once again.
“They’re the Globetrotters of sand soccer,” he said.
Its roster doesn’t feature Lionel Messi, Neymar or Luis Suárez. That trio plays for the club’s association football branch. Instead, the children in the training camp will be coached by Barcelona’s sand soccer squad and its coach, Ramiro Amarelle, a former captain of Barcelona’s and Spain’s beach soccer teams.
“He was just as good on the sand as (Brazilian legend) Pelé was on the grass,” Whalen said.
Amarelle will share tricks and tips of the pros. The kids can try them out days later in the youth brackets of the 23rd annual North American Sand Soccer Championships, Whalen said.
The $125 registration fee will go toward offsetting the costs of the championships and the Barcelona team’s travel and lodging expenses, which will run about $30,000, Whalen said. The costs are worth it to grow the sport in the U.S. and see kids interact with the players, he said.
Last year, when the Spanish team entered the tournament for the first time, children couldn’t get enough of the players and surrounded them, “trying to get them to autograph anything that wasn’t moving,” Whalen said.
This year, Whalen said, Amarelle will have an even stronger effect through the hands-on training.
“It’ll be like he’s the pied piper,” Whalen said.
Barcelona will host four sand soccer camps, each lasting two days, June 4-9. Discounts are available to campers with teammates or siblings who also sign up.
The deadline to register is May 30. For more information visit sandsoccer.com/camp.
Have a story idea or news tip? Contact City Hall reporter Judah Taylor at [email protected] or 757-490-2750.
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