ARROWS HAVE SETTLED IN SPAIN AND READY TO FACE LOCAL TEAMS
This year’s MultiChoice Diski Challenge (MDC) Golden Arrows winners safely disembarked in Spain this morning from a nine-hour flight that took-off from Johannesburg to Madrid.
This trip is a customary prize-trip for claiming the championship in the reserve league. However, it’s freshly constructed in the sense that previous winners, including Arrows who won it in their maiden season, two years ago, were sent to Netherlands during the past three seasons.
Abafana Bes’thende will spend 10 days in the European soil, where their trip will be divided between Madrid-four days- and Barcelona-six days,respectively. As a package of their trip, the South African reserve league winners will compete against Rayo Vallecano, Barcelona and Espanyol in friendly matches.
As preparations for their first encounter against Vallecano tomorrow, Abafana Bes’thende took a 20 minute around the streets surrounding their hotel in Madrid ILunion Pio Xll. The side’s coach Vusumuzi Vilakazi says that they took the walk so that they can relax and thus stretch their legs from the long hours of travelling.
“We spent a lot of time in the flight. So from the originally planned light training session we then decided that we take a walk instead,’’Vilakazi said.
“There won’t be activities today since it’s our first day. We want the players to rest. We want to make sure that tomorrow we come up as a strong opposition to Vallecano.’’
However, before the Lamontville-based team can even think of Vallecano. They have to reminisce the once-in a lifetime opportunity of watching current European club champions Real Madrid at the famous Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. Madrid will be playing host to Girona in a league encounter this evening (at 21:45 CAT). Arrows’ striker Yusuf Jappie says he’s filled with so much joy that’ll be seeing some of favourite players live.
“That’s something else hey. I can’t describe how I am feeling. It’s really something amazing to go watch Madrid at home,’’ said an excited Jappie about tonight’s fixture.
“Watching Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale and all the greats, is something that I am really looking forward to.’’
On the other hand, team captain Nkosinathi Sibisi says that they’ve already figured out how they’ll approach Vallecano.
“We have a game-plan for them,’’ Sibisi said with a chuckle.
“We know how we want to play…we have to be compact and not concede early. We want to score the first goal, and we’ll then take it from there.’’
