Older Partizan fans will remember year 1987 and the arrival of first foreign players to the club – Chinese pair Liu Haiguang and Jia Xiuquan. Now, almost 40 years later, Liu is President of Shanghai Football Association and he invited Partizan youths to the prestigious Shanghai Cup where our boys met their peers from Real Madrdi, Inter Milan, Stuttgart and others.
Former Partizan player, now club`s scout, Sladjan Scepovic led club`s delegation to Shanghai and he met with his former late 80s teammate Liu.
“We spoke of those days when we played together. Those were different times and people and I told him all of his former Partizan teammates are sending greetings. Liu was always positive minded and with a smile on his face. He is older now but his character is the same, he is still a good man – the most important thing in this world. I`m thankful to him for inviting Partizan to such a prestigious tournament, it was impeccably organized”, said Scepovic.
Partizan U17 side played against one year older teams and achieved fine success at this tournament, taking home great memories for life.
“Such tournaments mean a lot to the kids and coaches. They can see where they are in relation to top world clubs and it`s not such a big difference there. I already said how tournament was organized in a great fashion and we had an opportunity to learn lots of things. For example, Stuttgart director held a great conference where he spoke about how their club operates. Kids now have everything they`ve seen in their heads, how they are going to develop further on their football path”.
Finally, Scepovic told us Partizan will take part in next year`s Shanghai Cup too, so some new generation of Partizan kids will be able to see how much out club is respected around the world.
