I bet they make great coaches

And that they’re very big pushovers too.

Today, the II Torneo Benjamín Mejorada del Campo will take place, at the La Dehesa field in Madrid.  The “benjamín” category is more or less for children under the age of 10.  The following teams will compete in the tournament:  Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético de Madrid, Getafe, Rayo Vallecano, Canillas, los Piratas de Granero and Nuevo Mejorada.

Why should we care?  Well, because Real Madrid is participating, as well as Canillas, which is a feeder team to Madrid.  But the last two teams on the list are even more special, because they’re sponsored by two of our players.  It’s quite obvious who’s behind Los Piratas de Granero, but you might not know that Antonio Adán is the founder of the Nuevo Mejorada team.  (Well, unless you were reading my blog a year ago, and no one was).  Esteban and Antonio also do some coaching duties, along Dani Parejo for Getafe’s boys team.

Antonio is also the man behind this tournament, which he envisioned to help children in his hometown of Mejorada del Campo, since all proceeds (entry is free, but there will be a raffle of signed shirts from the famous footballers in attendance) from the tourney will benefit an NGO that assists children in the town.When interviewed about last year’s tournament, Antonio said, “the idea came to me in summer, when we decided to set up a football school for children, and do other small things to benefit children… The most important thing is that the kids enjoy themselves.”

And going off on a tangent, like Pepe Reina (although the difference here is that I admit I’m doing it), since the previous post linked to above mentioned Borja Valero AND we’re playing his current team, Villarreal this weekend, AND because there’s an underlying cantera theme throughout this post, here are some things he said about Madrid’s cantera during a chat with Marca readers yesterday, that I agree with.

– In terms of quality, Madrid’s cantera is the same as or even better than that of Barça’s.  The difference lies in the way the players are utilized.  Barcelona utilizes them for their own ends while other teams benefit from Madrid’s.

– In Madrid, results are always expected immediately and it’s difficult for them to have patience with a kid from the cantera.

– [When asked why he left Madrid]: My contract had ended, Madrid waited to resign me, they didn’t consider it an important issue, so I decided to leave to make my life elsewhere.