Day 2: July 31st

With heavy heads from a full day of travel and settling into our new home for the next ten days, everyone was tucked in their beds and sleeping soundly before lights out was even called.
The players awoke refreshed and eager to start a full day of soccer. Though it rained over night, we had another day of blue skies and great weather ahead.

Breakfast is served everyday at 8:30am. And even though everyone was a bit tired, they also looked forward to a classic English breakfast of bacon beans and toast to fuel up for the day.

I know what you are thinking, as were all of the kids. It looks like ham to me as well. It turns out, English bacon is very similar to ham. Personally I missed our crispy delicious American bacon but it is always good to try new things. 😃

After breakfast, the players headed down to the fields at both Lancing College and Ardingly College for their first of two training sessions of the day.

Down on the field, the Brighton & Hove Albion Academy coaches had the fields set up and were ready to get started after introductions and mapping out the week ahead. 

The players were all given a Brighton & Hove Albion water bottle and broken into training groups to start the day.

The goalkeepers were separated out and experienced a testing goalkeeper specific training of the highest quality.

Meanwhile, the field players worked on playing forward through the midfield and attacking zones after a warm up and passing drill.

After a break for lunch and rest, they were all back at it on the fields focused on 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 before finishing off with 7v7 games. A brief shower didn't dampen any spirits as everyone played hard and headed up to dinner flushed and ready for food.

The nightly team building exercise consisted of charades. Maybe on top of soccer we should all work on our acting skills. Many laughs were had by all.

Lights out had all the Players getting a good night sleep looking forward to our first games vs Brighton & Hove Albion Academy for the girls and Chelsea for the boys.