IISPORTSII
DEVELOPING
SOCCER
SKILLS
BY JUSTIN JARRETT | PHOTOS BY LLOYD WAINSCOTT
In retrospect, the post on GOAL Indoor Soccer’s Facebook page from Jan. 13, 2020, seems almost ominous. Photos of construction taking place on the massive facility off S.C. 170 are accompanied by a message that seems doomed in hindsight. “Moving fast!!! Are you ready for March?” None of us were ready for what would come two months later, when the world shut down as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold across the globe. Organized sports came to a standstill. We were advised to avoid crowded indoor spaces. Not exactly the prime environment to open an indoor soccer training facility. But Mauricio Llambias marched on, and GOAL opened its doors in July 2020, giving players of all ages around the Lowcountry a place to train yearround, even on rainy days. Now, Llambias has a bigger vision for providing opportunities for future soccer stars in the area, launching the GOAL-Levante UD Academy through a partnership with the La Liga club in Valencia, Spain. “It was hard at the beginning, very hard, but we kept it open; we survived,” says Llambias, who grew up playing the game in Uruguay before coming to the United States in his early 20s to play professionally. “Just to keep it open was a big thing.” Llambias himself played at a high level, joining a first division club in Uruguay at age 16 and playing in his home country and Argentina before earning a tryout with the Charleston Battery.
192 // H I LT O N H E A D M O N T H LY. C O M
