Soccer Dreams, a.k.a. Football Dreams, is a Canadian reality television programme that gives footballers ages 14-19 in North America the opportunity to win a contract with the Everton Football Club.
Based on the UK show Football Icon, Soccer Dreams tryouts began on June 29th 2007 in Toronto. Tryouts were also held in Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg.
At each trial, a team of coaching staff, including Everton Football Club Academy Manager Ray Hall, whittled the trialists down to 36 competitors. On August 20th, the final 36 reported back to Ottawa, where they played for the contract at the Oz Dome.
The show was produced by, amongst others, action film producer Jalal Merhi. Soccer Dreams debuted on June 7th, 2008, on Fox Soccer Channel.
Famous quotes containing the words soccer and/or dreams:
“If we were doing this in the Falklands they would love it. It’s part of our heritage. The British have always been fighting wars.”
—British soccer fan. quoted in Independent (London, Dec. 23, 1988)
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)