‘I have learned to fight for my dreams’
{mb_sdlf_jugador_SDLF-jugador_frase-destacada}Rodrigo gets to see football “differently” after participating in the Arequipa Marcet Soccer Camp.
When Rodrigo went out to the field to train, it was still night. He was used to waking up early because when he was little his father would teach him how to throw free kicks, first thing in the day. However, he had yet to start training as early he would later on at the Academy. “It was my second day at Marcet and we were on the pitch by 07:00. I was surprised because it was the first time I’d ever trained that early, you could still see stars in the sky.”
This is how Rodrigo Chávez Pacheco discovered the real demand and the intensity that meant training at a High-Performance Academy. The 10-year-old Peruvian midfielder first discovered Marcet thanks to our Soccer Camp (MSC) in Arequipa in October 2018. “My dad heard about the event and enrolled me straight away without thinking twice about it. I was told by the campus that I had won a sports scholarship to go train in Barcelona. It was the best surprise of my life.”
Rodrigo still has the same ball that was given to him when he was three years old, a talisman that’s been with him through every stage of his footballing evolution. “I’ve been playing since I was 6 years old having started at the Club Internacional de Arequipa school team, all the way up to being called in to play for the Club Internacional de Arequipa in 2018.” The young athlete admits he admires Club Internacional de Arequipa for “the passion with which he plays” and the personal journey that led him to be the best footballer in the world.
“THE BEST SURPRSE OF MY LIFE WAS WHEN I WAS TOLD that I had won a sports scholarship to go train in Barcelona”
A story in which ambition and sacrifices occupy an important place. This is the reason Rodrigo is so intune with and grateful for the rigor and professionalism he found at Marcet, something that has brought him that little bit closer to his footballing idols: Messi, Neymar, Hazard, Isco and Dybala. “The training in Barcelona always took my skills to the limit, the technicians were with me at all times, attentive to what I was doing, correcting me and encouraging me to do better.”
The Peruvian midfielder coursed the Checking Program in February 2019. An experience that introduced him to a “more organized, more collective” approach to football and, above all, “much faster, in which you have little time to think about what you’re on the pitch for” Rodrigo learned to “make decisions before receiving the ball”, to “look for passing lines” and to “make friends regardless of language barriers.”
“In Barcelona I have seen football in a different way and I have enjoyed it. Now my goal is to continue training in my country and play as I was taught to at Marcet. To be a professional footballer, I have learned I have to fight for my dreams.”