Barca start Indian innings

Despite India still in many senses football's backwater,in the recent past several European Clubs including Manchester United,Liverpool

Despite India still in many senses football’s backwater,in the recent past several European Clubs including Manchester United,Liverpool,Arsenal and Bayern Munich have been falling over each other to come calling. On Wednesday,it was the turn of Champions League winners Barcelona FC,as they announced their own foray into India.

Barcelona’s football nursery FCBEscola,which also sends players to the legendary footballing academy La Massia will be partnering with Conscient Football and conducting camps at the Heritage School in Gurgaon to train children in the age-group of 6-14. The camps will be a week long affair each time,with the first one scheduled to take place in January although Manit Jain,the Director of the Heritage school said it could be postponed to March. Jain says he expects between 6 and 8 camps to take place over the course of the year.

FCBEscola director Xevi Marce said the club will be providing top coaches from Nou Camp to run the camps and that they plan to train 10,000 children over the next three years. However even as he announced the venture,caution was Marce’s keyword. We don’t promise to create a Messi here,we will not promise anything that we are not sure of. For us this is a social project. We have to go step by step, he said.

Asked about the trainees’ chances to turn professional,Xevi said: Even at La Masia (Barca’s youth development centre) we can’t guarantee how many boys can turn professional. Lot of factors influence a player to turn professional. Only time will tell how many we can create from these camps, he said.

However Xevi insisted that Barcelona were in India for long term benefits,and not for the money. The natural progression from the camps will be to set up FCBEscola,the official football school of FC Barcelona he said. We would like as many children as possible to take part in the camps. After that we will see how to expand. It will also depend on the sponsors our Indian partners can bring.

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