Academy

“Bundesliga Dream 2.0”: HSV host talents from Thailand

As part of the DFL’s global outreach project, 17 talented youth players from Thailand started a week’s training with Hamburger SV on Monday evening and will be catching an exclusive glimpse behind the scenes.

The Hamburger SV youth set-up, which consists of nine teams, will receive some additions in their ranks for the next week. On Monday evening (16th September), 17 talented youth players began their visit at HSV, and will be with the club until Monday 23rd September as part of the “Bundesliga Dream 2.0” project. This initiative was introduced and organised by the DFL in cooperation with the Sports Authority of Thailand (SAT), the Thailand Football Association and the Bundesliga’s media partner PPTV HD. At the end of July, 66 talents were scouted by HSV academy scout Marc Basedow, Andreas Prechtl (FC Augsburg) und Roman Weidenfeller (Borussia Dortmund) from eight different regions of Thailand as part of the initiative. From this pool of players, 17 have made their way to Germany to spend a week at each of FC Augsburg, Hamburger SV and Borussia Dortmund in order to enhance their footballing education.

“We are really looking forward to having our visitors from Thailand with us, and are excited to see how the lads fare. We have organised multiple training sessions and two friendly matches in order to show them how we prepare our academy talents for a career in professional football. On top of that, a varied schedule and a host of activities in the city will give them an idea of our culture, country and people,” explained Christoph Rohmer, head of strategy and corporate development at HSV and responsible for organising the club’s participation in the project.

HSV academy scout Marc Basedow attends scouting event in Thailand in July.

Varied schedule at HSV and in Hamburg

After arriving at the team hotel on Monday evening, where the group from Thailand was welcomed by Marc Basedow and Achim Metz (academy staff), they took to the training pitch for the first time in Norderstedt on Tuesday morning (17th September) under the direction of Jonas Struckmann (fundamentals and development coach) and the U16 coaching team of Tim Reddersen and Levon Airapetian. In addition to daily training sessions, two test matches are scheduled this week. First on Tuesday (kick-off 18:00 CEST) against a select team of HSV’s U15s and U16s, before facing USC Paloma’s U16s on Thursday (19 September, kick-off 18:30 CEST). Both matches will be video-recorded for analysis purposes.

Alongside the sporting aspects of the week’s schedule, a varied mix of activities with HSV and in the city of Hamburg await the group from Thailand. These include a stadium and museum tour at the Volksparkstadion, a visit to a first-team training session with the exclusive opportunity for autographs and photos, a terminal and container ship tour organised by Hapag Lloyd and a visit to the world's largest model railway at the Miniatur Wunderland, followed by a city tour. On Saturday (21st September), the group will attend the U17s home match against Eintracht Braunschweig, before a watch party at the Volksparkstadion to watch the first team play their away game in Kaiserslautern. On Sunday, the U21 home game against VfB Oldenburg at the Stadion Hoheluft will round off the stay – you couldn’t possibly have a better week’s introduction to HSV.