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The livewire attacking midfielder was on hand with his new Heart youth team-mates to help launch the club’s first NYL side.

But it was the Socceroo World Cup hero and former La Liga striker who was centre of media attention in the side-streets of trendy Chapel St.

Blumgart said to have such a mentor who had played in the three big leagues of Europe was something he and the rest of the team would relish.

“It’s pretty awesome. I’ve talked to him about his career and I’ve read so much stuff. He’s someone definitely to look up to,” he told au.fourfourtwo.com.

“It feels great and hopefully if I play and train well enough I might be able to step up into the seniors.” 

It’s been a big year for the talented teen from Caulfield who was playing local football a year ago.

He entered the Nike Chance competition and made it to the final 100 of the global talent search. He was then offered the opportunity to train with Heart and in January this year in London he was selected in the final 32 of the contest.

Now he has his chance to make an impression at an A-League club with Aloisi and his assistant Arthur Papas – the newly crowned Victorian coach of the year.

As for Aloisi, he told au.fourfourtwo.com that being a coach has been something of a challenge – but one he’s up for.

“I’m loving it. It’s a lot more work involved but I’m really enjoying the training on the pitch but also analysing the games and cutting them up,” he said.

Aloisi has begun to use SportsCode – a software which enables coaches to analyse play by play their team and opposition teams.

“Showing the positive and negative moments using analysis, it’s been challenging but I’ve been lucky to be learning under John van’t Schip," said Aloisi.

"I’ve learnt a lot about the tactics especially what he’s [van't Schip] learnt through the Ajax way of playing. He played under Johan Cruyff and he knows him very well,” added Aloisi.

The club looked at over 400 players for Aloisi’s squad. And at today’s launch the former Serie A and Sydney FC striker stressed the importance of recruiting young players with good characters as well as talent.

“It’s all about developing players and hopefully getting players to a high level so they can play for the Heart first  team,” he said.  

“Every player that we’re going to try and select we think will have an opportunity to play for the Melbourne Heart first team.

“They are players who will fit our style.”

Heart CEO Scott Munn was on hand today and said it was a proud moment for him to see the Heart family grow.

“We took a bit of a gamble when we decided to open up the trials to let anyone come along. And what I love is that we’ve signed boys that nobody knew about,” he told au.fourfourtwo.com.

As for playing in the VPL nothing has been confirmed for Heart youth next season, although that is in the pipeline we understand.

“It’s something we think needs to be looked at moving forward and we’ve raised it on a couple of occasions with them [the FFV],” said Munn.

“We think moving forward getting these guys to play 12 months of the year is a goal of FFA and it’s something we’d buy into, it’s just how do we do it?”

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