Hi All, we are in the process of evaluating Gothia Cup as trip for our team. I know there are a lot of SoCal Teams who have traveled to the tournament and we are trying to get some information. We are evaluating going through a tour provider, doing it ourselves, or a combination of making some arrangements on our own and some with a tour company. Just looking for some insight/details from those who have done it - was a Tour Company used, was it a worthwhile experience, cost, etc. Just looking for some data points. Thanks in advance for the feedback/insight.
Gothia Cup
- Thread starter Woobie06
- Start date
Easy question to ask, very difficult to answer for many reasons but I'll try it.
Need to decide upfront if the team manager is willing to go the extra mile (more like a marathon) or does he/she simply want to be the interface to the tour company.
Also, planning time needs to be over a year to be realistic. Our team manager planned it two years out and got serious with a year to go. So if you're thinking next July, you're bit behind.
I can only tell you our experience. Our team did Gothia Cup (Sweden) and not Dana Cup (Denmark) the following week, like many teams do. Instead out team decide to holiday at Lake Como (near Milan Italy) and scrimmaged against local Italian club, as well as train with one of the lower division Italian teams. Also some took trips to Rome and Venice. We visited my wife's uncle who lives in the Ligurian Coast in Italy.
We used a tour company but the arrangement was worked by the team manger. We specified the kind of accommodations, and worked with the tour company to do logistics. We had tour guide assigned to us that spoke Swedish and Italian (note - all Swedish schools are taught in English so everyone speaks English in Sweden - had absolutely no issues. Italy is bit more local so it varied). We had tourbus transporting us from and to destinations since we flew to multiple airports and detours.
The tour company we used, I believe is now been bought out by someone else so I don't know the new name. You can reach out to Steve McManus who is a coach for Strikers North and have taken few teams to Gothia Cup. He used the same tour company we did but we were told that he did not do what we did, in terms of specifics and detailed planning. I believe he had the company take care most of it. The difference is you'll get what you'll get what the company assigns or you can specify more and get what you want. There probably is a difference in costs but it depends on how you look at it. Its it only soccer trip or is it a vacation for the family that includes soccer.
The biggest thing is to manage expectations of parents. Do not go into the tournament thinking that you'll win the whole thing. Our age group was BU16 and there were 188 teams globally. We made it all the way to round of 8 in the top tier and lost to the tournament winner. And for god sakes, no one will be recruited to play for European professional academy.
Our boys team was a hand select players from all the top academies and clubs in SoCal. We took 16 players and had 10 current DA players from LAG, Pats, FCGS and Arsenal, and 6 former DA players playing on CSL Premier or SCDSL Flt 1 Champions. We carried 2 GKs in the 16 and one of them is on one of the El Salvador's national team and now playing at UCSB.
So I don't know if any of this helps because if you team is GU10, I have no idea what part of any of this is appropriate. But I can fully endorse Gothia Cup as one of the most fun and exciting tournament we've ever done. We fell in love with Sweden and want to go back on holidays (maybe in winter and freeze.....)
Oh yeah, you probably want to know what our cost/person was. It was just under $4k for most of us. Some added bit more excursions and others less. I know many packages can be had for significantly less. You can buy by the yard, if you want more, like we did.
The attached image is from the Opening Ceremony. There's a party that follow that for adults only. That's another story with everyone dancing on the table tops......
Need to decide upfront if the team manager is willing to go the extra mile (more like a marathon) or does he/she simply want to be the interface to the tour company.
Also, planning time needs to be over a year to be realistic. Our team manager planned it two years out and got serious with a year to go. So if you're thinking next July, you're bit behind.
I can only tell you our experience. Our team did Gothia Cup (Sweden) and not Dana Cup (Denmark) the following week, like many teams do. Instead out team decide to holiday at Lake Como (near Milan Italy) and scrimmaged against local Italian club, as well as train with one of the lower division Italian teams. Also some took trips to Rome and Venice. We visited my wife's uncle who lives in the Ligurian Coast in Italy.
We used a tour company but the arrangement was worked by the team manger. We specified the kind of accommodations, and worked with the tour company to do logistics. We had tour guide assigned to us that spoke Swedish and Italian (note - all Swedish schools are taught in English so everyone speaks English in Sweden - had absolutely no issues. Italy is bit more local so it varied). We had tourbus transporting us from and to destinations since we flew to multiple airports and detours.
The tour company we used, I believe is now been bought out by someone else so I don't know the new name. You can reach out to Steve McManus who is a coach for Strikers North and have taken few teams to Gothia Cup. He used the same tour company we did but we were told that he did not do what we did, in terms of specifics and detailed planning. I believe he had the company take care most of it. The difference is you'll get what you'll get what the company assigns or you can specify more and get what you want. There probably is a difference in costs but it depends on how you look at it. Its it only soccer trip or is it a vacation for the family that includes soccer.
The biggest thing is to manage expectations of parents. Do not go into the tournament thinking that you'll win the whole thing. Our age group was BU16 and there were 188 teams globally. We made it all the way to round of 8 in the top tier and lost to the tournament winner. And for god sakes, no one will be recruited to play for European professional academy.
Our boys team was a hand select players from all the top academies and clubs in SoCal. We took 16 players and had 10 current DA players from LAG, Pats, FCGS and Arsenal, and 6 former DA players playing on CSL Premier or SCDSL Flt 1 Champions. We carried 2 GKs in the 16 and one of them is on one of the El Salvador's national team and now playing at UCSB.
So I don't know if any of this helps because if you team is GU10, I have no idea what part of any of this is appropriate. But I can fully endorse Gothia Cup as one of the most fun and exciting tournament we've ever done. We fell in love with Sweden and want to go back on holidays (maybe in winter and freeze.....)
Oh yeah, you probably want to know what our cost/person was. It was just under $4k for most of us. Some added bit more excursions and others less. I know many packages can be had for significantly less. You can buy by the yard, if you want more, like we did.
The attached image is from the Opening Ceremony. There's a party that follow that for adults only. That's another story with everyone dancing on the table tops......
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Do it!!! We just finished last week, it was an amazing experience for both the kids and parents...maybe more so for the parents, we had a pretty crazy group. The Gothia Cup makes the Surf Cup look completely bush league.
You book everything through the tournament in terms of accommodations. We didn't fly together as a team because every family took an extended trip to other countries. I'm sure our coach who is on the forum will chime...he handled all the tourney arrangements.
The soccer and the reffing is different than in the States at least at the U11 level. They have a philosophy of not interrupting the play and keeping the flow of the game going. For the most part if you are fouled but you or your team maintains possession they don't call a foul. They use verbal communication instead of the whistle to manage the match. This does lead to more physical play than we're used to. Our team was knocked around pretty good in a few games. A lot of shirt pulling and elbowing and sometimes worse but the boys adjusted.
We played teams from Sweden, Lebanon, England, Czech Republic, Republic of Georgia. Our kids played pick up soccer with kids from all over the world. The opening ceremonies were held in front of a packed stadium of over 40,000 with live music, parade of nations and fireworks. I could go on and on but if you want to PM me I can give you more information.
You book everything through the tournament in terms of accommodations. We didn't fly together as a team because every family took an extended trip to other countries. I'm sure our coach who is on the forum will chime...he handled all the tourney arrangements.
The soccer and the reffing is different than in the States at least at the U11 level. They have a philosophy of not interrupting the play and keeping the flow of the game going. For the most part if you are fouled but you or your team maintains possession they don't call a foul. They use verbal communication instead of the whistle to manage the match. This does lead to more physical play than we're used to. Our team was knocked around pretty good in a few games. A lot of shirt pulling and elbowing and sometimes worse but the boys adjusted.
We played teams from Sweden, Lebanon, England, Czech Republic, Republic of Georgia. Our kids played pick up soccer with kids from all over the world. The opening ceremonies were held in front of a packed stadium of over 40,000 with live music, parade of nations and fireworks. I could go on and on but if you want to PM me I can give you more information.