The FCBarcelona India Story Continues
So anyone who has been reading this blog knows that my first
major project in India (my breakthrough project) was facilitating FCBarcelona’s
entry into the country. Since then, my client Conscient Football, has been
incredible in working with club to execute programming around the country. In addition, FCBarcelona has sent two (2)
coaches to live in India full time to launch FCBEscola, the Catalan club’s
official football school. The progress of this project in such a short time is
nothing less than extraordinary.
A few camps and the planned launch of a school is all
positive, but most Indians remain critical of such initiatives until they see
“real results” which typically are “really unrealistic.” However, Conscient
Football and FCBarcelona gave their critics something to chew on this past week,
something which will certainly have people realize that this is no ordinary
project.
A group of nine (9) U-12 Indian players who were scouted in
Goa, Jaipur and Delhi were all housed at The Heritage School Gurgaon for a week
where they rigorously trained with the FCBEscola coaches and played friendly
matches against some local teams, including My Angels Academy. This week of
training was all in preparation for their trip to Barcelona where they would be
representing India in a global FCBEscola U-12 tournament.
The team went to Spain and ended up winning their group
which included countries such as Qatar, Egypt and Spain. Nobody, including FCBEscola Global Director
Xevi Marce, ever expected the Indian team to compete this well however it just
shows that with the right coaching and environment Indians can achieve
anything.
My personal happy moment was seeing the Indian team being
felicitated on the same pitch where a little less than 2 years ago, me, Xevi
and the Conscient Football Director, Anupama Jain, sat and dreamed of ways FCBarcelona can make
an impact on Indian football. There is nothing better than seeing dreams come
true…
Comments
Post a Comment