Luciana Vasconcelos
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - Russians are going to begin learning to play soccer with Brazilians later this year. The first Brazilian soccer school will be in Krasnodar, a city in southern Russia, and is scheduled to open on September 1. A second school will be located in Moscow.

The schools will work with youths between the ages of 12 and 14 who come from low-income families. There will be regular classroom studies, preparatory for university, along with special soccer training run by Brazilian coaches.

Meanwhile a group of 36 Russian youths will be arriving in Brazil on July 5 as part of an annual exchange program. They will spend two months at a Brazilian soccer club, Figueirense Futebol Clube, in Santa Catarina.

The bilateral soccer project is supported by the Russian and Brazilian ministries of Foreign Relations and Sports, along with the Brazilian National Sports Agency, the Russian House of Representatives (Duma), a Russian newspaper, the Novie Izvestia, and the Langsdorff Institute.

Translation: Allen Bennett