Sports
Bista, Tamang leaving for the Netherlands
National team footballers Ananta Tamang and Anjan Bista are leaving for the Netherlands on Saturday to join Marbella United Football Club of Spain for their upcoming tour.National team footballers Ananta Tamang and Anjan Bista are leaving for the Netherlands on Saturday to join Marbella United Football Club of Spain for their upcoming tour.
Along with Tamang and Bista, another U-19 skipper Bimal Gharti Magar was also supposed to join the Spanish nomadic club but the striker will undergo rehab for few more days in Kathmandu before joining his teammates.
Gharti Magar has sustained a minor ligament strain during the recent Simara Gold Cup while playing for Tribhuvan Army Club. He will require at least a week of recuperation time and will join the tour two weeks later, meaning he will at least miss two matches with the club.
Marbella is a non-league club which is targeting to get into the fourth division (Tercera Division) of Spanish football this year. In their March 13-30 tour, they will play at least 8-9 matches against the academy teams of the Netherlands.
After the completion of their tour, the Nepali trio will undergo training camps. While it is going to be first overseas experience for defender Tamang and midfielder Bista, Gharti Magar will add another brick to his haul of experience.
While Gharti Magar has already established himself in the national team, Tamang and Bista are dubbed the new generation of footballers who impressed in the last two tournaments that Nepal won. Both the players were lauded for their performance in Nepal’s triumphant Bangabandhu Gold Cup and South Asian Games campaign.
Gharti Magar had spent several months with academy teams of four top tier clubs in two European countries. The teen footballer had undergone two-month training-cum-trial with Belgium top tier clubs FC Anderlecht, Gent and FC Brugge after spending two weeks with the Netherlands’ outfit FC Twente for the same purpose for two weeks.