Hyderabad: Good news for all the Football lovers in Hyderabad!! We get to see only few football coaching class in and around Hyderabad. But now the city will soon witness a full-fledged American Football Academy with the support of Telangana government. This is the first kind of it in India, according to Venkatesh Movva, chairman of American Football Federation of India development committee.
The football Academy will be fulfilling the needs and aspirations of the increasing pool of American footballers around Hyderabad before similar academies are set up in other cites. Dr Venkatesh Movva said,“Hyderabad, which hosted some Elite Football League of India at Begumpet Police Stadium a couple of years ago, will also host the first ever Nationals.”
“The newly-formed National Federation will launch a series of long-term programmes to popularise the sport first by starting the Nationals Flat Football championship (a modified version) for the under-15 and under-19 age groups besides Nationals for seniors and Schools and Colleges league championships. “NRIs are willing to lend financial support to popularise the sport in India,” he insisted. The AFFI official said 65 universities had already adopted the sport and it was increasingly becoming popular amongst students. “With the Federation having 18 States as affiliated units to start with, the response to our efforts has been pretty good so far,” he added. “With the AFFI affiliated to the International Federation, which in turn has the most dominant and influential National Football League as its development partner, there will be coordinated efforts to work for the promotion of the sport,” he said.
“Our first target will be to see that the Indian team takes part in the Asian championships by next year,” said Dr. Venkatesh.
