FOOTBALL Great performance: A team from Iasi beat Sampdoria and drew with Juventus and Fiorentina – PHOTO – Ziarul de Iasi

Luca Scrab, Petru Bejuscă, Robert Balan, Eric Dascălescu, Eric Paraschiv, Andrei Darie, David Enache, Tudor Arvinte, Octavian Bădiliță, Rareș Vochița, Alex Bolat are 11 10-year-old children from Iasi whose names may not mean anything in local football .

In Italy, however, they left deep traces, managing to fight equally with teams of huge names, Juventus Torino, Sampdoria and Fiorentina, surpassing the first two in the ranking!

What it is? The aforementioned youngsters, who play at the club of former Polytechnic midfielder Didi Florean, recently participated in a tournament in Italy, the Ravenna European Cup, which initially brought together 24 clubs.

Didi Iași Academy started the competition in group C, alongside Fiorentina, CHC Roma, Gardanne, Sangiuliano and Ravenna FC. In the debut match of the tournament, the “yellow-black” from Iași finished tied, 1-1, with Fiorentina.

The first group stage continued with three wins for Didi Academy, 6-0 against CHC Roma, 2-0 against hosts Ravenna FC and 3-0 against French side Gardanne, but ended with a defeat against those from Sangiuliano, 1-3.

With 10 accumulated points, the children from Iași qualified for the second phase of the groups in the “Silver Group”, where they faced Juventus Torino, Sampdoria and Queens Roma.

Didi Academy remained unbeaten against the Italian giants, beating Sampdoria 1-0 and drawing 0-0 with Juventus Torino. Iași won the group after a 2-0 win against Queens Roma and returned home with the gold medal in the “Silver Group” after beating Juve and Sampdoria in the standings!

“It was a very good tournament by our children, the results against teams like Fiorentina, Sampdoria or Juventus speak for themselves. We played to win every game, no matter what name we came across, and I can say that we could have won all of these games with a bit of luck. More important than the results is the fact that we participated in a new international tournament, which means a lot for the children’s experience. We continue to work to bring out good players for Iași football and for Romania, as we have been doing for the last 10 years”, said Bogdan Curpăn, coach of the Didi Iași U10 Academy team.