How is Everything going with our Cambridge United Football Academy Boys?

How is Everything going with our Cambridge United Football Academy Boys?

I thought it was time to write another update on how the boys are doing with their football and their training at Cambridge United. I wrote a post a while ago about the realities of being a football parent and its commitments, its helped out a lot of parents who are soon to be going through the process, or thinking about it so I wanted to write more!

Dylan Update

Dylan is now in the Cambridge U10 academy and is doing very well. He is off on tour to Germany this weekend and again in February. Again, we send him off for three days with no parents allowed, not even any contact allowed. He has done it before though so we are fine with it. He gets to play the big German teams like Byer Munich, he will have a great time. And the last time he went his team won the whole tournament!

The footy season started again not long after it had finished. We had a six-week break over June/July. Dylan has played in some brilliant games this season and is playing with a group of amazing boys whom are really really good! They have played bigger, higher tier clubs (the clubs are ranked in three tiers based on facilities and coaching, Arsenal, Chelsea etc are tier 1, Cambridge is tier three) and beaten them. Tottenham, Liverpool, Arsenal, Leicester have all been played and beaten. It’s been great to travel around the country and visit the beautiful facilities at these impressive training grounds. Often, we get to see a few of the first team players too.

Dylan is training on a Monday and Thursday night, Saturday morning and then plays games on a Sunday. He also has indoor training every four weeks on Tuesday. It’s a lot of football! Over the summer he was asked to trial for the Stevenage U11 district team for whom he now also plays for. District is the route to England so we were excited for him to play a bit of different football. He plays games with Stevenage on a Saturday. These games are more than often local, yeah!

We are super proud of what Dylan has achieved and he continues to go from strength to strength and most importantly loves it with a passion and commitment that will take him far.

Josh Update

We have had a bit of a wobble with Josh, the talented left-footer who was spotted and started playing for Cambridge at the age of 5! To make life easier for us logistically we asked if Josh could play at the same venue as Dylan and would often train with boys a year older.  This knocked Josh’s confidence; these boys are strong and very physical and he lost his enthusiasm. He started to withdraw from training so we took him out for a break.

During the break, he joined a local grass roots team – Watton-at-Stone. Josh is officially an U8 but he has joined the U9 Watton team. It has given him his confidence back again. He took part in a tournament for Cambridge during the October half term, after which he returned to train with the pre-academy boys.

This now meant that we had another training date to add to the weekly diary, on a Friday night for Josh. And now post-Christmas Josh has been invited to play in the U8 pre-academy games and starts this week playing Fulham.

He is back to enjoying it and playing really well so we are happy. We will find out in the next few months if Cambridge want to sign Josh to their U9 academy team. This will mean that the grass roots football has to stop as he will be in the same routine as Dylan Mondays, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Jack Update

Jack started school in September 2017 and was then able to start playing U5 football. He started in November, lasted three weeks then said he hated it. And nothing was going to persuade him to go back. We are sad that he’s not interested but also relieved as Saturdays were a nightmare trying to get three boys to three different locations, now we just have the two locations to deal with!

Travelling this week.

This week alone we have had football every single day with travels near and far. It’s a busy one!

Sunday Dylan played West Brom away in Birmingham

Monday Dylan trained with district locally in Stevenage

Tuesday Dylan trained with Cambridge to prepare for the Germany tour in central Cambridge

Wednesday Josh has training with his local Watton team

Thursday Dylan has training in Newmarket

Friday Dylan needs to be dropped to Stanstead for his flight to Germany and Josh has training in Huntingdon.

Saturday Josh has a game at Fulham, in Surrey.

Yep a very busy week!

We Love it

Yes,we absolutely love it (except when it’s so cold your fingers feel like they are going to fall off). We are just about managing to do all of this with still just the one car, hubby working every other Saturday and relying heavily on other parents (Gary if you read this you know you are a super star) for lifts. Yes, it’s costing us a small fortune in petrol, football boots and tour costs. The thing is, you never know when it’s going to end so we embrace each week as it comes and enjoy the games. We are 100% dreaming of our boys playing in the premiership and winning that world cup for England!