The trip was seen as an opportunity to give our starlets a glimpse of life on the road, something they could get used to as future professionals. <\/p>\n
After making the 10-hour flight to the Far East, we had two days to acclimatise and gear up for our first match against Shijiazhuang Gongfu. <\/p>\n
Zach van der Straaten headed home from close range to give us all three points, but we were back in action little over 24 hours later, defeating fellow Premier League side 3-0 thanks to goals from Luis Munoz and a double from Jaden Maghoma.<\/p>\n
Under-15s head coach Craig Smith was in charge of our young guns and was delighted with how his side showed maturity and adapted to the conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe squad is a very talented group. So we always knew that whatever tournament we were going to go into, like, we’d be competitive.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it couldn’t have gone any better. We knew there would be some unknowns facing Chinese opposition, but they showed some real maturity in their performances in the way that they played, the way we stayed patient, broke them down and then scored our goals.<\/p>\n “Two full games in two days is a massive test. We played against Shijiazhuang in the morning. They’re not professional players, so they haven’t got the ability to just go and chill out in their room and that’s it. <\/p>\n “I think that’s part of the game that they’re learning is when to really focus on recovery. They managed to do stuff like yoga and a mindfulness session, where everyone lies down, closes their eyes, turns the lights off, and just really focuses on their breathing. We really went into the depths of recovery and it really helped us for that Aston Villa match the next day.”<\/p>\n \n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Outside of the pitch, excursions were a key part of the trip to China. A jaunt to the beautiful Summer Palace, where the squad took in a martial arts class, a table tennis masterclass against a world champion and a trip to the Great Wall of China filled their time.<\/p>\n While it took around 2,000 years to build the Great Wall of China, our defensive wall was constructed in just nine days as we kept four clean sheets in four matches to take home the trophy.<\/p>\n Heralding our defence, Smith said, “How we defended was excellent. To keep four clean sheets across the whole tournament, and I could see the way we defended our goal was brilliant, outstanding. One of our tour objectives was to dominate both boxes; we certainly did that.<\/p>\n “We had some amazing experiences out there. We walked down to the Bird’s Nest Stadium in the mornings, which is an amazing arena and something special for the boys to see. <\/p>\n “The ping pong class and the kung-fu lessons were great too. It was really nice to be able to fill the gaps in between game days and training and recovering all of that. So that really helped keep the boys focused and energised.”<\/p>\n While a visit to the Great Wall of China stood as the perfect comparison to our defensive prowess, we were also banging in the goals. Eight came in the group stage to set us up for a final against Zhejiang and an opportunity for Craig to lean on some experienced heads.<\/p>\n Head of our academy, Per Mertesacker, was out in China for his final tour before departing after seven years overseeing our bright stars of the future.<\/p>\n Before the final, Per sat down with our squad for a 45-minute interview, answering questions and recounting some of the biggest moments in his career, including finals with Arsenal and the World Cup final with Germany in 2014.<\/p>\n \u201cPer was top, right the way through,\u201d Craig said. \u201cHe\u2019s a mentality monster in the way that he just attacks everything and the way that he sees everything.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is just no giving less than 100 per cent with Per, and he makes everybody feel like that as well. Having him there and this being his final tour was really special and we got to celebrate with him at the end.”<\/p>\n On top of that, our young guns were given words of encouragement from a host of first-team stars. Academy graduates Max Dowman and Myles Lewis-Skelly sent videos of support, as well as former Hale Ender and our number 10, Ebere Eze. The messages of support were rounded off with one from our manager Mikel Arteta.<\/p>\n He added: “To get the messages from the first team players and Mikel, it meant a great deal to us and it motivated the boys ahead of the final to go out there and bring it home.\u201d<\/p>\n There was plenty to get used to out in the Far East. The Premier League-organised event drew plenty of attention, with players and even Craig himself subject to autograph and photograph requests.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an eye-opening experience for all of the boys. We had fans waiting to sign autographs, which I wasn\u2019t expecting. Someone even came up to me with my headshot and asked for an autograph! But the boys approached everything really well, and that attention is no bad thing.”<\/p>\n We took a squad of 21 out to China, which also featured the son of former Invincible, Jeremie Aliadiere, Leo. Our 10 goals were shared around, but one star stood out in Jaden Maghoma, who netted four times, including in the final, along with Hudson Sando, who scored twice in four games.<\/p>\n Jaden’s performances earned him the Player of the Tournament award. \u201cHe\u2019s like a silent assassin,\u201d Smith said. \u201cHe’s one of those players that you want in your team just because he’s got a brilliant work rate.<\/p>\n \u201cHe’ll do a lot of running without the ball, but then really links the bottom half of the team to the top half of the team and how we get from one part of the pitch to the other. <\/p>\n \u201cHis build-up play is really, really good and he links really well with the others around him. But then, obviously, when there are moments where you need him to come alive in the box, he does that really well.\u201d<\/p>\n The tournament win comes with four weeks left in the season. Craig will be saying goodbye to a host of stars as they move up the age groups and believes this trip will serve them well in years to come.<\/p>\n He said: “We’re at that stage of the season where we’ve only got a few weeks until some of these boys get handed over and become someone else’s group.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was quite a nice way to round off the season and I\u2019m really excited to see what the future holds for these boys.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four games, four wins and one trophy in the bag, our under-15s’ trip to China for the Next Gen Beijing Cup could not have gone any better. Victories over Shijiazhuang … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Under-15s win Premier League Next Gen Beijing Cup <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\nBUILDING OUR OWN GREAT WALL OF CHINA<\/h2>\n
MESSAGES and MERTESACKER MASTERCLASS<\/h2>\n
SILENT ASSASSIN<\/h2>\n