Spartan Elite, champions of the 2019 Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five, are scheduled to depart the island today to represent Jamaica at the World Finals to be hosted at Institute Projecto Neymar Jr in Praia Grande, Brazil, later this week.

The Spanish Town-based Spartan Elite earned the all-expenses-paid trip to Brazil after defeating Pump House in sudden death at the national finals in Half-Way-Tree Square on June 16. The all-important goal came from the boots of Akeem Gibbons, who launched a powerful strike from just beyond the half-line in a one on one battle with Cornell Robinson. Both teams had played out a 0-0 draw at the end of the 10-minute game.

Spartan Elite will go up against players from 42 countries, with the winning team at the World Finals getting the chance to play with Neymar Jr’s team, which could be without the Brazilian ace who is recovering from a ruptured right ankle ligament.

Rohan Thompson, captain of Spartan Elite, said that his team is in high spirits at the moment.

“The feeling is good in the camp right at this moment. Everybody is anticipating their departure to Brazil tomorrow (today), as we are now putting some stuff together for our travel. We are truly happy and grateful for this moment to represent our country. They (the players) are very confident within themselves. They are saying that they are going to win this World Finals and take home the championship to Jamaica,” Thompson told the Jamaica Observer.

Thompson knows very well that success only comes with hard work and he believes his team is in the right frame of mind to achieve glory.

“We have been doing a lot of training. We have done some intensive training and they [the players] have responded well, plus we have also done some tactical training as well. We are not just going there to play football, we are going there to play with a certain pattern and a certain tactical approach. We have the chemistry already but we wanted to get the tactical part of it together, and we have worked on that and we have it locked now,” he claimed.

The Spartan Elite team is made up of Gibbons, Thompson, Romio Brown, Byron Sweeney, Tayne Douglas, Johnoy Hanson and Kiody Chambers.

Dubbed the biggest five-a-side football tournament in the world, the Red Bull Neymar Jr’s Five, which was hosted in Jamaica for the first time, was started by Neymar da Silva Junior in 2016 and is now played across six continents. It is set to bring the aspiring Jamaican footballers the opportunity of a lifetime.

The draw takes place on Thursday, with matches on Friday and Saturday.

The tournament facilitates five players on each side, with no goalkeepers. Whenever a team scores the opposition loses a player, which makes the games fast, technical, tactical, and great fun. A game lasts 10 minutes or until one team does not have any players left. A team is expected to boast up to seven players, aged 16 to 25, plus two over 25, with no gender limitations — which means there can be mixed teams.