New Delhi, June 22: Indian football icon and former captain Bhaichung Bhutia formed his football school seven years ago in New Delhi.
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His dream was to produce as many footballers as possible who could reach a standard to represent India and bring glory to the country.
Today, after seven years, Bhaichung Bhutia Football Schools (BBFS) seems to have earned a place where it can easily be said that BBFS is the biggest organisation in India which has been working relentlessly in the grass route level to produce quality footballers.
Presently, BBFS has opened 23 training centres in six cities in India. The number of their students has crossed over 1,500.
At the same time, the number of coaches in BBFS has reached 100 also! The coaches are being educated through coaches' education programmes organised by the All India Football Federation (AIFF).
BBFS is already an AIFF affiliated academy and its under-18 and under-15 teams have been participating in the Junior I-league championships for the last couple of years.
More interestingly, BBFS has made a tie-up with Garhwal FC, a Delhi-based club that takes part in the New Delhi first division league.
As an outcome of the tie-up, the U-18 boys from BBFS get the opportunity to take part in the Delhi first division league.
Bhaichung, speaking on the issue on Wednesday, said: “Unless you get an opportunity to play against better and stronger players you cannot earn maturity as a player."
Following Bhaichung's initiative BBFS has also executed another required feature in its football development programme.
That is, sending the boys abroad for exposure training and participation in the tournaments. Under-15 boys from BBFS had to gone to participate in a junior level tournament in Europe three years ago where they played against the teams like Fulham FC, Borussia Dortmund, and PSV Eindhoven.
Now, BBFS is tie-up with a premier Dutch club FC Rotterdam and it has also been learnt that BBFS will send their boys to Netherlands next year.
Still, BBFS has not been able to set up a residential school. Bhaichung said, “Our next step is to introduce a residential football school.
"Thirty to forty best boys, to be spotted from our all centres, will be staying there along with modern infrastructural facilities."
OneIndia News