By Mark Baber
May 26 – A month after first becoming a sponsor of Barcelona, Saudi based Fitness Time has been chosen as the official partner of FC Barcelona in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates under a partnership agreement which will see Barcelona establish seven football academies for the Fitness Time in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Under the terms of the expanded deal which was announced at a joint press conference in Riyadh, Fitness Time becomes the 15th partner of Barcelona Soccer Academy (BSA) worldwide.
Fitness Time is owned by Leejam Sports Company, an organisation which has received funding from Investcorp for a 25% stake and which is the owner of Saudi Arabia’s largest network of sports and fitness centres with a customer base including high net worth individuals and corporate entities.
Javier Faus, vice president of FC Barcelona, said: “Under the partnership agreement, Barcelona will establish seven academies in the Kingdom, of which three will be in Riyadh and two each in the eastern and western regions.”
According to Faus, Barcelona will make highly qualified trainers available to the academies. “I don’t expect that these academies will produce a new Messi but our focus will be on strengthening the passion for the game and improve the talent of the trainees,” he said.
Abdul Mohsen Al-Haqbani, chairman of the board and managing director of Leejam, said Barcelona had “considered our professionalism and popularity in the Middle East, especially in the Kingdom.”
According to Al-Haqbani, “This partnership is also part of our social responsibility of facilitating special academies for children between the ages of 4 and 15.”
Al-Haqbani added that, “We embarked on a whirlwind tour around the world over a period of seven months to find out the best professional soccer clubs running specialised academies. We came to the conclusion that BSA is the best in the world.”
The academies will be operated on a fee-paying basis and chosen children will have some limited opportunities to train at the club’s academy in Barcelona, although there is nothing to indicate the project is intended in any way to circumvent the regulations on transfer and training of minors from abroad which recently earned Barcelona a transfer ban.
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