BENGALURU: LaLiga club FC Barcelona’s Barça Academy, formerly known as FCB Escola India, has announced the launch of two football schools in the Garden City.
Barça Academy will be starting the football schools from November 19 at two locations – Trio World Academy, Sahakar Nagar & Ecumenical Christian Centre, Whitefield and will be catering to over 1,000 budding footballers.
The two permanent bases of the Barça Academy in Bengaluru will be under the supervision of technical director Jordi Escobar and he will be leading a team of 12 coaches. To provide comprehensive year long training to young footballers, thrice a week classes will be held in each centre.
The launch of Barça Academy in Bengaluru comes at a time when India is preparing to host Barça Academy Asia Pacific Cup 2019 in January 2019. On September 29, FC Barcelona Legend and former Argentina World Cup player Javier Saviola announced that Barça Academy, Gurugram, will be hosting the Asia Pacific Cup 2019, the premier intra Barça Academy competition.
According to Antonio Claveria, head – Barça Academy, APAC: “Indians have always been passionate about sports and particularly football in a huge manner. The growing popularity of football among the youngsters is a testament of the game’s untapped potential in the country. FC Barcelona has always stood committed to its tenet of nurturing talent and in India, over the last 7 years, Barça Academy has built a strong foundation for tomorrow’s footballers.”
FC Barcelona was the first major European club to set up base in India in 2011 when they partnered with Conscient Football and held the first FCB Escola Camp in New Delhi. The camp was a big success and since has been a regular feature of the footballing calendar of many top cities in the county including Bengaluru. Encouraged by the huge demand for world-class youth training, FCB and CF decided to open the first Barça Academy in New Delhi. Many of the players in the FCB Camps and Barça Academy have travelled to Barcelona to participate in the Escola International Tournament, FCB Clinics and various other tournaments.
Barça Academy India now has the largest offering of all such academies and has trained more than 25,000 players across various formats.
Speaking on the occasion, Anupama Jain, director Conscient Football, said: “In 2011 when we partnered with FC Barcelona to bring in Barça Academy to India, we were certain that the partnership will change the way the game of football was perceived in the country. We inculcated the Barça philosophy of not about just playing football better, but living the Barca values and building camaraderie. In our journey so far, we have focussed on enhancing not only the standard of the game but have also successfully delivered focussed training programs tailor-made for India, without comprising on Barça quality and values.”
Barça Academy’s training methodology nurtures talent while providing holistic development to the youth. More than just learning to play football, the academy instils in a youngster the Barca values of camaraderie, friendship, trust and loyalty. The program in India mirrors these values and has taken the lead in providing many value added services like fitness & conditioning, health & nutrition, physiotherapy etc. The children and many times even their parents are benefitting greatly form these activities that are learnings for life.
The fact that Barça Academy is one of the best youth development programs in the world, coming from a club that has produced talents like Messi and Iniesta from its own stables, is now bearing fruit in the Indian environment as well. Be it the representation in India’s U-17 World Cup Futsal squad or in Haryana & Delhi sub-junior & junior state teams or in the Delhi football league representing various clubs the Barça Academy trained players are beginning to make a mark. Barça Academy is the largest football academy in India and has been rated as the top academy by the AIFF.
All of this goes hand in hand with the club’s ongoing ambition to become the most admired, beloved and global sports institution on the planet. This mission is supported by such core principles as humility, effort, ambition, respect and team-work, while the club is also famed for its commitment to society, which is channeled through the FC Barcelona Foundation and its work to educate children through the positive values of sport. Such unstoppable growth in recent years has led to a global reach of more than 315 million fans and made FC Barcelona a world leader on social media.
