Manuel Pellegrini, the Manchester City manager, explains his ethos on youth development at the Premier League club:
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On a philosophy
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“It’s not easy to develop in such a short time.
“We are just starting to play in a different way, but if you ask me if I’m happy for the moment with what we’re doing.
“Yes, I think that in six or seven months we have improved a lot.
“I think when the players have more confidence, more trust in the way they must do things, I’m absolutely sure that this club will continue improving.
“That’s why it’s so important to win the title, to win something important this year, because the only way that the players will trust in what we’re doing is by winning.
“There are different ways to win, I choose one throughout my whole career and it’s always a philosophy about wanting to be a creative team, to be an attacking team.
“Maybe a lot of people confuse what that means, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have to defend, it means that it’s important to know how to defend but with less players.”
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On instilling a style
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“Of course that’s what we’re trying to do here at Manchester City.
“The work in this team is just starting, the owner has had just four years here, the philosophy of the club in those four years has been taking shape and I hope this will remain the same in the future, with or without me.
“The manager of the first team must use the same philosophy across the whole academy. We will have a way of developing our young players who will be very useful for us in the future.”
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On Uefa Financial Fair Play
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“It’s important to promote young players, but also it’s not always easy to promote them when you have an significant amount of money to buy players. During the past years Barcelona have shown, you can mix both.
“To promote one or two players here from the academy and to continue being a competitive team, because if you want to be a formative team, it’s very difficult to remain competitive in the short term. So I hope that in the future we can do both things. Maybe we can promote a lot of players, not all will end up playing for Manchester City but they can play in other teams, and we can try to have two or three good players from our academy.”
akhaled@thenational.ae
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'Young girls thinking of big ideas'
Words come easy for aspiring writer Afra Al Muhairb. The business side of books, on the other hand, is entirely foreign to the 16-year-old Emirati. So, she followed her father’s advice and enroled in the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s summer entrepreneurship course at Abu Dhabi University hoping to pick up a few new skills.
“Most of us have this dream of opening a business,” said Afra, referring to her peers are “young girls thinking of big ideas.”
In the three-week class, pupils are challenged to come up with a business and develop an operational and marketing plan to support their idea. But, the learning goes far beyond sales and branding, said teacher Sonia Elhaj.
“It’s not only about starting up a business, it’s all the meta skills that goes with it -- building self confidence, communication,” said Ms Elhaj. “It’s a way to coach them and to harness ideas and to allow them to be creative. They are really hungry to do this and be heard. They are so happy to be actually doing something, to be engaged in creating something new, not only sitting and listening and getting new information and new knowledge. Now they are applying that knowledge.”
Afra’s team decided to focus their business idea on a restaurant modelled after the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Each level would have a different international cuisine and all the meat would be halal. The pupils thought of this after discussing a common problem they face when travelling abroad.
“Sometimes we find the struggle of finding halal food, so we just eat fish and cheese, so it’s hard for us to spend 20 days with fish and cheese,” said Afra. “So we made this tower so every person who comes – from Africa, from America – they will find the right food to eat.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
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UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Analysis
Members of Syria's Alawite minority community face threat in their heartland after one of the deadliest days in country’s recent history. Read more
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Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
