If not for soccer, Alfath Dwiangga might have never set foot on the pitch at Emirates Stadium in London.

"I'm so proud that I will able to see what I have only seen on television before," he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. "I'm proud that I will represent Indonesia at an international event," he added.

Alfath, 12, who is a big fan of Spanish player Cesc Fabregas, does not know that Fandi Ahmad, his coach for the last two months at his school in Ciputat, South Jakarta, is a famous player.

"I learned about him after we went to Persebaya headquarters. My father told me that Fandi was a great player from the old days."

Alfath, the son of a computer technician from Surabaya, East Java, and 20 children other children under 13 years of age were selected by talent scouts from more than 7,500 contestants in Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Medan and Makassar to join the Jakarta-based Soccer School Indonesia Arsenal (SSI Arsenal).

After a series of tests, the team was reduced to 15 most talented children, who were dubbed "the dream team". They will represent the SSI Arsenal at the 20th Arsenal International Soccer Festival in London.

"I would like to see the standardization of soccer schools in the near future because the fate of Indonesian soccer is in the hands of these young players," said SSI Arsenal director Iman Arif.

"We have had terrific development in the first three years of our school. We started with 40 invited students and now we have about 450 students," Arif said, adding that youth development needed government attention and could not be left in the hands of the private sector.

SSI Arsenal will also send its under 11, under 14 and under 17 teams to the annual event, which will be held July 31-Aug. 9 at the Royal Holloway University in Surrey, 40 minutes from London.

The four teams will compete against teams from 45 countries where the Arsenal also has soccer schools.

The 67 Indonesian children will also have their chance to watch the 2010 Emirates Cup between Arsenal and AC Milan at Emirates stadium.

The SSI, which was established in Sept. 2, 2007, first sent an under-13 squad to the event in 2008 that finished as a runner-up. The school did not send a team to the 2009 event due to lack of sponsors.

"First of all we are very grateful to Asuransi Raya, who made things happened," SSI Arsenal head coach Dale Mulholland told reporters Tuesday. "It's a super important thing because in sports there is a chance of injury. What do we do if we have broken legs?"

Mulholland said Indonesia needs a proper youth system to develop each player for the future and that is the reason the club hired top class coaches like Jules Onana of Cameroon, Jang Sunday, Fandi Ahmad of Singapore, and Claudio Luzardi.

"We are lucky that we have these kinds of coaches available, very few countries have so many talented coaches, such as Jules Onana, a world cup veteran who actually wants to coach youth soccer; Jang Sunday, AFC agents, top-of-the-class graduated or Fandi Ahmad, one of the best coaches in the world. Any professional player at any level respects him," said Mulholland.

"In association with Arsenal we have the best youth coach system in the world. I can say that without a question," said Mulholland adding that the UK headquarters had raised the SSI Arsenal as the number one school in the world.

"They tell the gappers who really want to learn coaching to come here," he said.

The club has recently had two players to join the Netherlands division three club VV Geldrop and another three join other European clubs. The 17-year-old Ibrahim Henry and 16-year-old Calvin Abimael Ngarbingan is on a visa process to join the Dutch club. "We are just waiting for their working visas," said Iman Arif.

Popular

Policymakers to rethink single-day general election format

Authorities raises Halmahera volcano alert level to highest

Indosat showcasing Indonesia's Digital Literacy Initiative at the Global DTC Workshop