The four official FC Barcelona schools in Japan enjoyed a fun training session this morning in Gamba Osaka’s facilities with players from the club’s Under-14s B team, who make their debut in the Junior Soccer World Challenge tournament in Osaka tomorrow.

This meeting reinforced the ties between FC Barcelona’s formative teams and the Japanese Barça Academies, located in the towns of Fukuoka, Nara and Katsushika -and the Tokyo prefecture of Shinagawa Oimachi.

After being welcomed by the young Japanese players with a guard of honour, the players coached by Albert Puig and Arnau Blanco -from Barça Escola Barcelona- ​​and the athletes from the academies undertook a 40-minute joint training session and three games involving the different schools.

Finally, a group photograph was taken of all the athletes and members of the coaching staff, and the Japanese players presented the Under-14s B players with different gifts and wished them good luck in the international competition. The activity was very enriching, since the local athletes were very excited about the visit of the youth players -who were also very excited to travel to Japan for the first time to play in an international tournament.

The Under-14s B side have been put in Group H, along with Vegalta Sendai, JFA Training Center and Daiwa House Futures, for the first phase. The final games will take place from Saturday.

The day marked the reunion of three people who were recently at Reus: Players Ángel Jiménez and Jofre Torrents, and director of the Local Project of the Barça Academy Nara, Raul Cosials.