The Chandigarh Football Academy
As an Indian football fan, I was surprised to see an Indian youth football project that:
1. Focused on the truly young - 9 to 11 and a half year olds
2. Favoured quality over quantity - A residential academy where intense training could take place under the supervision of coaches
3. Had demonstrable results at a pan India level - losing only to the final winners in the Subroto Cup for the past two years
4. Was a government run project - One only has to see the embarrassing results that the SAI (Sports Authority of India) sports hostels have produced since inception
5. And was not located in Goa, Bengal or the North East - who would have thought of Chandigarh, being a possible cradle of talent for Indian football.
But when one looks into the genesis if the CFA, things become much more obvious.
The Birth of the CFA
The CFA was the brainchild of Lt. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob, PVSM (Retd), the Governor of Punjab in the year 2000. Lt. General JFR Jacob is a football fan and this is the reason he chose to do something related to football.
By focusing on the right age (9 to 11 and a half), he did something that is unheard of in India, where youth mostly means boys in their teens. Many columns on our website have harped on how, that is too late and we need professional intervention when children are much younger, if we wish to entertain hopes of being of even a mediocre sporting nation.
Talent scouts were sent far and wide within Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh to spot talent. No favours were granted as children were only judged on skill and potential. As a result, the boys at the CFA are a mix of Indian society, from some middle class kids to some kids from humble backgrounds, from whom the opportunity to live in a big city like Chandigarh and go to a proper school are the Indian dream itself.
The children did have adjustment problems for sure as most of them came from non English speaking backgrounds and with little or no exposure to the urban way of life. Lt. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob saw to it that private tutors were hired, access to PC's was arranged so that the kids can overcome all of these handicaps, and within a year or so, most of they did. And those whose football talent was not upto the mark, were sent back. Lt. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob is reported to have said that the CFA is a football project and not a scholarship. Perhaps only an ex-army man could have taken the correct but hard decisions like this.
Trainees & Training at the CFA
There are two sets of boys at the CFA currently, a senior batch and a junior batch. An ideal trainee is supposed to spend a total of six years at the academy (age 9 to 15). The senior batch comprises of 23 players that were inducted in August 2000 while the junior batch comprises 21 players that were inducted in June 2004.
Six days of the week, the trainees train for an hour and fifteen minutes before they head off for school. The evening session lasts 2 and a half hours. What is most heartening is that a separate "mental training' exists and this is also done every day of the working week.
Special care is given to the diet of the youngsters. They have access to a gym and all training is done under the supervision of two ex-India internationals, Harjinder Singh and Tejinder Kumar.
The CFA does take part in various football tournaments across the state and the North and more often that not is the winner in these given the advanced level of training versus the competition.
Key Achievements
Some of the key achievements of the CFA since their inception have been:
1. Losing out to the eventual winners of the Subroto Cup in 2006 in both the Junior and the Sub-junior category.
2. Runners up in the Subroto Cup 2005, Junior category
3. Reaching the quarterfinals of the global Adidas +Challenge (five A-Side football in 2006) in Berlin, Germany, where they lost to Brazil, after beating, England, Egypt and Ecuador.
4. Some of the players from the Academy have been called to the various camps for the age specific football teams at a national level too.
The Future
The CFA is also looking at raising the age at which they take in the children. This may be because rising prosperity levels have made it harder to find parents that will place their children in a far off Academy, even if it is for their better future. For football though, this would be a sorry development as the end product is likely to be a poorer footballer.
With most of the trainees in the senior batch, attaining the age of 18 in 2008, the true test of how the trainees fare in the real world is close at hand. The CFA has tied-up with the Army so that the boys have some sort of a secure employment option ahead of them. But with some sort of professionalization of the NFL on the cards in the near future, there is a good chance that some of the CFA trainees will make their way to the professional ranks of Indian football.
They key to the success though will be how they are nurtured in their early years. If they are just made to swarm the benches or worse, follow the lackadaisical standards of some of the NFL clubs, then these trainees will fade away. But those that end up in clubs where youth and new influences are valued, these trainees might just turn the tide in India's faltering football fortunes.
Until such time, greater exposure trips on a regular basis, outside of North India, would be ideal for the development of the CFA trainees.
This report on the CFA was prepared by Harmit Singh Kamboe, IndianFootball.Com North America Correspondent. The report was prepared based on information in the mass media and an interview with a sports official in the Chandigarh Sports Administration.
