About 100 young local soccer players jumped at the opportunity to spend the school holidays polishing their skills with world-class coaching from the Barca Academy.

Barca Academy is the official youth training arm of the Spanish Soccer club, FC Barcelona. The week-long camp at Waratah Sports Club in Orange saw local kids put through the same training regime and philosophy as the professional players.

“The kids are enjoying it! The weather has been a little bit crazy this week, but we are following our methodology and training hard,” said Barca Academy’s Miki Alcon last Thursday.

“One of the big secrets of our success is that we share our methodology and these players here are training and following the exact same methodology of our players in Barcelona - that our first team are using.

“This is amazing for these kids, who get to live and train just as professional players from Europe.”

More than just developing skills on the pitch, Miki said Barca Academy’s first priority is to produce players who have respect, work hard and work together as a team.

“We always say that we don't want to focus only on the skills of the players, but we are trying first to make very good humans through the sport and then the best footballers possible,” He said.

“Our coaches teach them that practising a sport is very important, but to be a good person, to take responsibility, be helpful with the coaches, the ref, with the rest of the players — for us, that is very, very important!”

Barca Academy operates training camps in more than 30 countries around the world. They first came to Australia three years ago, but this is the first time Orange kids have had the opportunity to take part here in the Central West.

Miki said they look forward to bringing their coaches back to Orange in the near future.

“I hope! These last few days we have had some really interesting meetings. We met with [Orange Mayor] Tony Mileto and he encouraged us to come back because he is very happy that we give all these kids from Orange a chance to learn about our methodology and this is what we are working towards…

“If we are not back next year, then in the next two years we will be back!”