The first day of the Central America Digicel Kick Start Clinics footballers training camp at Manchester City’s Academy kicked off to a great start today, with the boys taking part in an intensive training session under the expert eye of Academy coach, Paul Power.

The six boys – kitted out in Manchester City gear and Digicel sports bags and jackets – were put through their paces in tactical drills to assess their control of the ball.

Goal keeper, Kevin Melar from Panama, was trained separately to the rest of the footballers for the first half of the coaching session. The Academy’s goal keeping coaches carried out an assessment of his goal keeping skills, and were impressed with what they saw.

Academy Coach, Paul Power, said of the boy’s performance: “The first thing I noticed about these six footballers is their impeccable manners. They were very polite at lunch today and they listened to everything the coaches said. Performance-wise, some of the guys are ahead of the others. Kevin Melar is an excellent goal keeper and he did very well today – I got a great report from the goal keeping coach. He has good spring, is very agile and in the shooting sessions with the rest of the boys, he made some great saves.

“As we have a language barrier between the boys and the coaches, it was a bit slow to start as the boys found it hard to understand, however, this didn’t last long as Dylan (Florez) speaks English and did a great job at translating. The two attacking players did well today and we’ll try and get a game going soon so that we can have a good look at the defensive players. Again, I was very impressed with their positive attitude – especially for some of them whose first time this is leaving their country. They seem to be enjoying the experience so far.”

On arriving in Manchester for their week-long training camp with Manchester City’s Academy, the boys took a tour of Manchester City’s senior team’s training facilities on Sunday to see how an English Premier League club is set up. A host of activities has been scheduled for the boys over the coming week to ensure that they experience every aspect of what life as a professional footballer is like.