AIFF Media Team

NEW DELHI: Fresh off securing two commendable nominations in the three awards categories in the inaugural AFC Special Grassroots Awards last month for ‘Best Grassroots Club’ and ‘Best Grassroots Leader’, the AIFF has now set its eyes on a multiplying their efforts in this field with the launch of the new and improved AIFF Grassroots Leaders Course. 

The course, which was previously based on FIFA’s Grassroots Philosophy and later amended to include AFC’s Redefined Grassroots Philosophy, served as a stepping-stone into youth football coaching. After five years of successfully running the Grassroots programs and Grassroots Leaders Course across the length and breadth of the country, the year 2019 promises some exciting new developments brought forth by the All India Football Federation for Grassroots Football in India.

Over the past few months, a dedicated team of seasoned AIFF Grassroots Instructors led by Anju Turambekar,(Head, AIFF Grassroots Dept.) and monitored by AIFF's Technical Director Savio Medeira congregated in Goa to review the entire course content.

“We called upon some of the brightest and most experienced Instructors to make up the Grassroots Content Review Team. In the two workshops that were conducted, we must have come up with over a hundred different suggestions but the key was to latch on to the ones that were relevant to the current demands of the modern day game.”, Savio said. 

What followed were long hours of brain storming with plenty of discussions, debates, presentations and notes which eventually resulted in a completely revamped content structure. For starters, the course has now been changed from a three-day to a four-day course with the practical sessions being doubly increased.

The revised curriculum now features several new topics like Baby Leagues, Introduction to Futsal, Child Protection Policy, Nutrition, Parent Education etc.

Beginning in 2019, the AIFF Grassroots Leaders Course will also become compulsory for coaches planning to pursue the AIFF & AFC Coaching Certificate Courses.

To take it forward and to meet the demand for the courses, the AIFF in association with Reliance Foundation will conduct two Instructor Courses in Mumbai – a Refresher Course for Existing Instructors on the December 23 and 24 followed by a Course for New Instructors from December 26-30, 2018 The course is organized by AIFC and both courses would be conducted by Ms. Anju Turambekar.

To manage the task of monitoring of courses in the next year, the AIFF has set up a Core Team of Lead Instructors who will assist Ms. Anju comprising of Bijish Ben (Kerala), Dinesh Nair (Maharashtra) Shailesh Karkera (Tamilnadu)Deepak CM (Kerala), Arki Norgrum (Meghalaya), Shekhar Kerkar (Goa)