Professional coaches from the Real Madrid Foundation were in Phnom Penh over the past few days to share their educational methodologies with the NGO Pour un Sourire d’Enfant (PSE).

The visit came about after PSE in Spain and the Spanish club’s foundation signed a new collaboration agreement last Monday to create another sporting school in Phnom Penh.

This will be the second such school in Cambodia after Real’s first agreement with the NGO SAUCE launched in Battambang province last year.

The objective of the school is to help underprivileged children by “providing them with schooling and professional training to have a better future”, according to a statement on the Real Madrid Foundation website.

The collaboration is set to occur at PSE’s school in Stung Meanchey district in Phnom Penh and will benefit 100 boys and girls aged 6 to 18 from the organisation.

According to PSE’s deputy director Alvaro Mayoral, the agreement is a three-year contract to be reviewed on a yearly basis and with options to extend after the third year. The official training is scheduled to launch before Khmer New Year, which will be celebrated this year on April 14-16.

Mayoral told the Post yesterday: “The agreement with Real Madrid Foundation is a great opportunity for PSE to learn from their training methodologies that are used all round the world.

“Our staff will benefit from these training techniques, improving their capacities, while our beneficiaries will learn not only how to play their favourite sport, but also values like team spirit and solidarity as well as healthy lifestyle habits.”

According to Mayoral, the foundation sent two representatives to visit PSE last Wednesday before leaving yesterday for another project.

“PSE currently provides training courses for children in many other sports, not just in football. Thanks to the agreement with the Real Madrid Foundation, we will also be able to apply their methodologies in other sports,” he added.

The agreement was announced in Spain as Enrique Sanchez, executive vice president of the Real Madrid Foundation, and Marisa Caprile, president of PSE Spain, signed the deal at an event also attended by Emilio Butragueno, director of Institutional Relations at Real Madrid, and Fernando Alonso, spokesperson for the board of directors at PSE Spain.

Emilio Butragueno said of the new agreement: “We are thrilled to collaborate in such a touching project. The founders discovered that the children were practically living in a landfill and it stirred the soul. They realised that as well as food, they needed education and professional training”.

PSE, which was founded in 1995 to help underprivileged children in Cambodia, currently has 6,500 students studying grades 1 to 12.