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Football in Anantapur is growing from strength to strength with consistent efforts being made by Anantapur Sports Academy’s (ASA) Grassroots Football Program combined with Anantapur Football League (AFL). ASA’s AFL recently kicked-off its third season and is bigger than ever as it registered its highest number of participating teams so far, subsequently leading to its highest number of participants.
AFL 2016 began on September 3 and will go on till the third week of December 2016 for its league stages with as many as 20 ASA’s mandal (community) football clubs registering to participate in the league. AFL 2016 consists of four age categories for boys and one for girls, those being the Under-13, U-15, U-17 and U-19 for the boys while Under-19 league for girls. A total of 76 teams representing the ASA’s 20 mandal clubs throughout Anantapur are divided into two groups: North and South in their respective age categories. The league will follow the usual home and away format during the course of the group stages of the league leading to the knockout stages to be played early next year at Anantapur Sports Village (ASV).
Thus close to 1,200 youngsters – boys and girls are playing in the AFL. Effectively, on any given Sunday during the course of AFL 2016 across all age categories, as many as 38 league games will be played spread around the district.
The AFL has been a prime time, allowing the ASA to conduct their talent identification and then allow ambitious youth to then be nurtured and groomed at the ASV Football Academy. This is something that has now showcased football from Anantapur to the national arena, as last year most of the players from ASV football academy played their first ever U-15 Youth League, representing Fateh Hyderabad AFC. The progress in the development of grassroot football combined with continuous efforts to offer better opportunities to these rural youth set a platform for the ASA. And it has now gained its own affiliation from the All Indian Football Federation (AIFF) to field the ASVFA in the upcoming Hero Youth League that most of the ASA footballers are vying to be part of.
On the backdrop of this commendable work, ASA Technical Director, Miquel Llado highlights, “the main aim of the league is to allow the mandal teams the maximum amount of playing time and match experience. The league also gives us the opportunity to expose our youngest teams to competitive football as early as we can. A number of the teams have already begun developing younger sides too, which supports the expansion of the football project to children from the U-9 and U-11 along with girls from the U15 age groups too.”
