LISBON - The Elon University men's soccer team is spending its 2019 spring break abroad, taking part of the Elon Global Experience this week in Spain and Portugal. Keep up with the program in during its international and cultural learning and playing experience as members of the team post daily blogs of their adventure at elonphoenix.com.
 
Fans can also follow the team on Twitter and Instagram and browse through the photo album on Facebook.
 
Day 1
 
After almost a full day of traveling, we finally reached our destination of Lisbon, Portugal. Once we arrived, both groups met up at a local lunch spot on the beach. We ate pizza, pork with potatoes and tomato bruschetta and had fresh brewed espresso and bottled water help to wash it all down. Afterwards, the team had a few minutes to check out the beach until the bus arrived in order to take us to our next destination.
 
After lunch, we headed to one of the two largest soccer clubs in Portugal called Sporting Lisbon. We were given an extensive tour of their stadium which holds approximately 50,000 fans at a time. The tour guides were Portuguese, but spoke excellent English and we learned a lot from them. It was great to see the history of the club and how they built a system that produced arguably the world's best player (Cristiano Ronaldo).
 
With the team being exhausted from jet lag and travel, we had a small training session before dinner to get the blood flowing and the legs moving. The training area was a small concrete futsal pitch that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. After shaking out the legs, we headed inside the hotel for dinner. Bedtime was early so we could catch up on some much needed rest and be ready for a big day tomorrow with training at Sporting Lisbon's Academy.

By John Walden