Cardiff City’s under-12 team will be playing at the Truce Cup in Belgium next month.

The qualifying event was hosted in Portsmouth, at the HMS Temeraire – with players taking part in a memorial service on Armistice Day before the tournament began.

This tournament is part of the Premier League games programme with the Truce Cup created to commemorate the match which was part of the Christmas Day truce during World War One in 1914.

“We competed against Bournemouth, Southampton, Chelsea, Brighton, Fulham and Crystal Palace,” said Bluebirds’ under-12 coach Daniel Smith. 

“The only game that we lost was against Crystal Palace, but we came out on top against Chelsea in the first game and went on a four-game winning streak from there.

“We travelled up the night before and it was a good experience for the boys to bond together in the team hotel. It was a tournament that we wanted to be successful in as we knew the rewards were huge.”

Tom Hutton, Cardiff’s assistant head of youth development (under-12 to under-16) at Cardiff City, says: “The success our boys achieved has been coming.

“We can be proud that not only did we achieve success in the tournament, we can come away and say that our players are as good as anybody’s even compared with sides like Chelsea. 

“We’ve shown that our players can compete with the best in the country.

The young Bluebirds travel to Belgium on Friday, December 7, with the tournament taking place over the next three days. 

City will be joined by Arsenal, Burnley and Sunderland plus clubs including PSG, Anderlecht and Club Brugge. 

The 12 teams are split into two groups of six.