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Back to basics for Algarve bhoys

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John Kennedy Celtic newsCeltic’s youngest professionals get back to basics at Barrowfield today after an intensive fortnight at Brown’s Sports Club in Quarteira on the Algarve.

Eighteen players accompanied by a full compliment of coaches and backroom staff took part in the Leonardo Da Vinci project as they were put through a carefully prepared programme of fitness work as well as some local education.

The Da Vinci project funds the development of young players with Celtic benefitting from the project in January 2011 when they travelled to Turkey.

Next Tuesday Celtic start off in the new look under-20 league with coach John Kennedy looking forward to the new set up and working with a squad largely based on last season’s u-17 squad which includes Stuart Findlay, Lewis Kidd and Jamie Lindsay.

On Saturday Jackson Irvine was given his first team debut against Inter Milan but the work to produce top team candidates is long and strenuous with the Algarve timetable an eye-opener for many of the players who were rushing to their twitter accounts to to describe the pain!

“We’ve worked hard on them with three or four sessions a day,” Kennedy explained. “The players were living in villas which is a change from hotels, they were in their rooms for 10pm, up at 7am in the morning for breakfast and on the training ground for 8.30am.

“They knew that they were there to work, firstly on the training ground, in the pool then a gym session and back on the training ground at 5.30pm then most of them are looking for their bed after that schedule.

“It’s been a great opportunity to work them hard, play a couple of games and get together as a group.”

Kennedy added: “This is a young group to be playing in the u-20 league, they are keen as mustard and want to work hard, they won’t be as well developed physically as a lot of the players they come up against but as long as they show the hunger and desire we’ll be pleased with them.”

Stuart Findlay Celtic newsSix of the group that took part in the da Vinci project finished last season with the first team squad at Norwich.

Centre-half Stuart Findlay mixed his time captaining last season’s u-17’s with a spell in the 19’s including the Next Gen Series before starting against Norwich at Carrow Road.

There is a clear routemap for everyone in the Celtic Academy to follow with Kennedy delighted to play a part in helping kids achieve their Celtic dream.

“We talk to them that we’re here to push them on to the next level,” the u-20 coach explained. “There’s only so much that we can do- it’s upto the players to show the right attitude to make things happen.

“We can give them lots of help and information but they have to push themselves to progress or it won’t happen. They know that it’s about hard work but the rewards are there as a few like Stuart Findlay discovered last season. There are no short cuts, they have to graft before they can make the next step.

“It’s pleasing for an awful lot of people whenever someone makes their first team debut, the whole Academy has contributed to it.

“Stuart has been in the Academy a long time, the coaches down to u-12 and u-13 get a lot of delight of seeing someone like him get a chance in the first team, everyone has played a part in getting to that stage.

“It’s not just about myself and Tommy (McIntyre) there’s already a lot of work done on players in terms of development before they reach us, we just try to add a bit more and pass them on again to the development squad and onto the first team.

“The Academy has a lot of good players, hopefully more will make the steps that Stuart has.”

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