The Yellows defender responded to questions from Villarreal’s young international players from across the world
An amazing opportunity. Young players from Villarreal CF’s international academies have taken part in a fun activity with men’s first-team footballer Pau Torres, who responded to questions from boys and girls from around the world.
The youngsters were able to ask all sort of questions about the defender from Vila-real, who joined the Yellows Academy as a youngster, and with hard work and sacrifice, moved up through the youth system until becoming a key player for the first team and a regular in Spain squads.
Pau is a role model for the thousands of children who proudly represent Villarreal in the USA, Japan, Mexico, Australia, South Korea and Sweden. All of them dream of one day making their debut at the Estadio de la Cerámica. Pau’s path to achieve that has not been easy. As he recognises, he has had good and bad moments. However, the Yellows’ No.4 underlines that the most important thing is “knowing how to recognise when something goes bad and fight to change the situation and be able to improve.”
For the Spain international, his path to become a professional would not have been possible without Villarreal CF: “I’ve been lucky enough to have a club that as special as this in my town. I’ve had great team-mates and some of the best youth coaches around, who helped me and gave me a competitive spirit and taught me how to make sacrifices since I was small.”
During the fun chat with the youngsters from across the world, Pau also unveiled who his footballing idols where when he was a child. For him, both Bruno Soriano, who he thinks is a role model for all academy players, and Santi Cazorla, who he says is ‘an exceptional player on the pitch and a marvellous person off it’, are two footballers who he looked up to, not only for their footballing talents, but also for their values and their excellent human qualities.
Before ending the virtual meeting, he wanted to motivate all of the children who play football to follow their dreams, but underlined that the most important thing was going home happy after a training session or a game.
The Villarreal Academy project has the following international academies: Villarreal Virginia, Villarreal Nebraska, Villarreal Force, Villarreal NY Bolaños, Villarreal Texas, Villarreal Las Vegas, Villarreal Houston, Villarreal Montreal, Villarreal Halland, Villarreal CD México, Villarreal Sydney, Villarreal Melbourne and Villarreal Krasnodar. There are also affiliate schools which form part of the family, such as Obyungear (South Korea), Kashima Academy (Japan), Adiur (Argentina) and FC Santa Coloma (Andorra).
Click play to watch the full video of Pau answering the questions.
