The Rising Star International Sports Academy is offering a free training session tomorrow morning from 7am to 10am at the Vietcam Training Center near Northbridge Community to help aspiring footballers develop their skills.

The weekly clinic was held for the first time last weekend at the ROOY 7 Sports Club in Tuol Kork district, saw 14 boys go through a series of ball handling exercises led by academy director and founder Ken Gadaffi and Paul Abosede, who played for Metfone C-League club National Police Commissary for the first half of the 2012 season.

According to Gadaffi, the sessions aim at gradually introducing competitive club football to young and upcoming players by working on ball mastery, passing and dribbling before engaging in five-a-side games.

“We are looking at the future where some of these young kids will start to play professional football and so they need to start learning the basics from early age,” said Gadaffi.

“There are many [mini football] turfs sprouting up in the city of late and many young players are getting involved in football. Our goal is to make these players to become future champions. We will continue to nurture them and give them the right training to help them grow in the game.”

During the summer, RSISA sent two young players to attend the Arsenal Soccer School in London, and the hope is to send more players to gain valuable experience abroad.

Gadaffi remains optimistic that many more young Cambodian players will be discovered and developed into future stars through links with academies in Europe, America and Canada.

The trainings are open to boys in three age categories – U10, U13 and U18.

“These are the right ages to catch them and make an impact on their basic skills. I hope local club sides will look towards RSISA in the future to sign up players for the league,” added the director.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dan Riley at [email protected]