10 The Youth Teams of Vålerenga FC

It was the 6th of February 2011. A month had passed since Vinod joined the club. It was February now. In this past month, his schedule was simple: Wake up at 04:00 in the morning, go to the nearby field and jog for half an hour. Then practice set pieces and agility inducing practice sets for another hour or so. Then come back to the dorms and take a bath. After that doing school work for another hour. By then his dorm mates would be ready and they would go have their breakfast and then attend the school. Theirs was a private institution which had ties to the club. Thus all of the Academy players who lived in the dorms went there. The school was over by 3 in the afternoon. Then they would go back to their dorms, freshen up and go for their evening practice session in the Academy. That lasted till 7 in the evening with 5 on 5 scrimmages at the end. After the practice was over, he would study whatever was taught in the school that day and spend another hour or two and go to have his dinner. After that, he would call Greg and his parents and talk to them. That was the last item on his schedule before going to sleep. During the weekends though, there were slight changes. On Saturdays, after breakfast, the training sessions used to start. This is used to go on till 4 o' clock in the evening. So on Saturdays, after the training was over, Vinod used to study and finish off pending assignments until his dinner. Sundays were the free days. So on Sunday, he woke up at 7 in the morning and continued his morning practice. After eating breakfast, he prioritized on knowing his locality better. So he wanders around his surrounding areas and would meet up with Greg. They would generally talk about his training, his school and of course his dorm mates.

There were four players in a single dormitory. Vinod's dorm consisted of a Goalkeeper (Ivan), a Central Defender (William), and a Defensive Midfielder (Aksel) along with himself. So barring the language gap, this was a utopia for someone like Vinod who wanted to know more about what the other positions especially their mentality, their thought process etc. By now, the four of them were very close friends and used to play 2 on 2 matches every Sunday evening (i.e. after Vinod came back to the dorms after roaming about the city of Oslo). This immensely improved a lot of technical details of all the four players as after the match, they would sit down and discuss, well sort of discuss. Since Vinod did not know the local language of Norwegian except for the basics like Hello, Good Morning and other basic phrases, so that session would literally be gibberish mixed with body language.

Due to his one month of effort, all of his physical stats excluding his stamina, jumping, agility, and sprint speed increased by 1. His agility and stamina had increased by 5 each because his training in the academy was primarily focused on increasing his stamina. His jumping did not increase at all and his sprint speed increased by 2. In his mental stats, all the stats except composure and aggression increased by 1. As far as his shooting was concerned, his heading and curve increased by 2, and the others increased by 1. In the ball skills section, his ball control remained the same but his dribbling increased by 3. As far as his passing skills were concerned, his crossing and long pass did not improve while his short passes were the one that improved drastically by 6 points. The other skills remained the same.

After coming to the dorms, there was another thing which Vinod took care of the most - his diet. He never ate anything outside of his dorm/school food after he joined. It wasn't because he was stingy or he did not have any money. It was because Vinod knew the immense impact a healthy balanced diet would have on one's body as shown by another manager whom he respected the most - Arsene Wenger. This was the one thing that revolutionized the Premier League after the 1995-96 season. When Arsene Wenger joined Arsenal in 1996 as the club's manager, the first thing he did was to give his players a diet schedule to follow. The effects were shown the next season itself: Arsenal winning the Premier League. Thus Vinod followed the diet schedule given by the club more faithfully than any other in their dorm.

As soon as Vinod finished eating his breakfast, as the day was a Sunday, he planned on meeting Greg. As soon as he was about to call him on where to meet, a notice was posted on the common notice board. The content of the notice was simple:

All players must assemble on the Academy Field number 1 by 5 pm.

Signed by: Martin Andresen (Manager) and Tommy Berntsen (U-18 Manager)

That was it. As soon as the youth players saw that notice, the entire atmosphere changed inside the dormitories. It was a mixture of emotions in the dorms with tension, excitement, anticipation, and nervousness. But the problem here was that the entire notice was written in Norwegian and Vinod was not able to understand the reason why everyone was so in mixed emotions. Only after going to meet the dorm head did he understand the content. Then Vinod assumed the reason to be that they were going to meet the first team manager. That was a big thing because Martin Andresen was the one who enabled the Bohemians (nickname for Vålerenga FC) to go to the second place thereby helping them qualify for the UEFA Europa League Qualifiers while also being a player on the team. Even though retired in the last match of the 2010 season, this was a still big deal because they were in a slump after winning the title in 2005. As far as language was concerned, normally during training, the coaches spoke broken English and used body language and signs to communicate with him. The one person in the dorm who knew how to speak fluent English was the dorm head. So he quickly went to the dorm head and explained his situation and asked him what the notice was. So the dorm head called someone related and at last arranged for a translator for Vinod.

After that, he came to his room and when he was about to call Greg, he saw Ivan, Aksel, and William nervous and excited. He left them in their own world and called Greg to inform him that he would not be able to meet him. The time passed and it was quarter to five. All of the players started walking towards the designated location. While walking, he also spotted his translator with whom he had spoken just a few minutes ago on phone. They reached the venue and everyone settled down. Then they saw two men talking animatedly to each other. Every player was then asked to stand with their own age group. And so the speech from the former player-manager current manager began

"The current youth system is a brainchild of mine. This football club was in dire straits just a mere ten years ago and luckily they overcame the situation then. But then the spendings were to be cut off in order to not let the club back to its previous state. Thus came the need to create an efficient youth system. But then, this club was not able to produce the result for the first few years. So when I was a player in Brann, I got a call from this club and so here I am. Don't mistake this as arrogance. I spent nearly one and a half years to create an effective and efficient system and the end result is the complete first batch of U-12, U-14, U-16 and U-18 players of the current youth system. Be proud of yourselves for it is your hard work, talent, and determination that has brought you here. Our scouts have assessed your potential before giving you a trial or a professional contract to you, but...." here he paused for a moment and then he said

"Just look around you. Inevitably some of you have to go out of the final team. Because in the end football is played by 11 players against 11 players with 5-10 substitutes on each side depending on the competition. This time though there is a slight change when compared to the previous years. In the previous even if you were not qualified for the team in the U-14 team say and you were 14 at that time, you were given a free pass to practice with the next set. But that was only because this system was in its grassroots. But now, we are slowly expanding our reaches to our Scandinavian neighbors, some countries in Africa and even in some Asian countries. There are many players who would go as far as to kill to join the youth system of a top tier of a European League Competition. We may not be known outside this country but the fact is that we are still a club which participates in Europa and Champions Leagues starting with the qualifiers. So from now on the standards will be much higher and training will be much harsher. There is still one month left before all of the leagues begin. From this year the youth team's aim will be simple: Win them all. There will be no more free tickets. If you want a place in the starting eleven, then you must earn it with tooth and nail. So yes just look around you. The total numbers after the selection of our squads will be cut nearly into a sixth. If you are not up to the mark, you will be out. As simple as that. So to all the players gathered here: Good Luck and thank you!" saying this both of them left the pitch leaving an extremely awestruck crowd of players.