Thanks to the continued support of Balzan’s main sponsor Investors Mutual, the Balzan Nursery continued to make further significant progress coming into the new season.
Over the summer period the Balzan Nursery has recruited a number of leading youth coaches for its youth segment including John Galea as Balzan’s new under 9’s coach and Charles Micallef as the new Under 11 coach. In addition, Silvan Ciscaldi, who has just returned from a month in Sydney working with the Milan Soccer School continues to head the Nursery and from this season will take direct responsibility for Balzan’s under 17 squad.
Balzan has also made a number of significant player acquisitions for its youth squads including some of the top youth players. Two of these players, Gianfranco Micallef and Mikhail Sciberras, being selected to attend trials in Italy in December after trials were held by ex AC Milan player Andrea Icardi at the Nursery’s facilities in April.
In addition, Balzan continues to attract leading Italian coaches to work with the Nursery. To this end, the current Juventus under 17 coach Fabrizio del Rosso will be holding training sessions in early July with players from the Balzan Nursery. Further professional Italian youth coaches will be visiting the Nursery during the 2012/13 season.
Mr. Anton Tagliaferro, the founder of Sydney-based Investors Mutual and Balzan’s main sponsor said in a statement “I am very happy to continue to sponsor Balzan Youths. We have set two main aims for the new 2012/2013 season – one is for the club to maintain its status in the Premier Division and the second objective is for the club to continue to build the Balzan Nursery into one of the best on the island. For me the real success of any club is to be successful at all levels – from its under 9 team to its first team and this is what we want to achieve at Balzan.”
“The visit of Fabrizio, one of Italy’s leading youth coaches to the Balzan Nursery, the signing of new local coaches and players to strengthen our youth sector in 2012/13 as well as further negotiations currently under way are all proof of this commitment. At Balzan, we want to build a club where our first team coach Ivan Zammit will in future have the choice of first class players coming through the Balzan Nursery to our first team.”
Tagliaferro added “I am very happy to say that thanks to all the hard work of George Borg, Balzan’s President with the first squad and Peter Cipriott with the youth teams together with the continued support from Investors Mutual that all the right building blocks are in place to achieve our two aims this season.”