Sporthood is proud to announce the launch of The Young Blasters Sporthood Academy in partnership with Kerala Blasters FC – Kerala’s premier football club. The partnership will focus on developing grassroots football all over Kerala for kids aged between 5 and 15. The experience of being part of Indian Super League for many years and the rich coaching expertise built over the years have enabled the Kerala Blasters to develop a unique playing style. The club wants to spread that philosophy at the grassroots level across the state.
Sporthood with its state of the art technology platform and the largest network of neighbourhood sports centres in south India is well placed to support Kerala Blasters in this initiative. The current partnership is expected to reach all the districts in Kerala over the next 18 months while delivering the same International quality of football to all the participating children. The program has separate plans for stand-alone sports centres as well as schools and other academic institutions. The interested local partners are currently being given the option to sign up into the program on a first come first serve basis.
Standardized Content and Coaching
All the coaches in the system will be certified by Young Blasters and Sporthood together to ensure that the quality of coaching available across the network meets the expected high standard. The program plans to deliver the latest in coaching ideas, that will take budding football stars from grassroots to greatness. In addition to that, the best players will get a chance to win scholarships and get scouted by Kerala Blasters FC on a regular basis. These grassroots classes will eventually become one of the best sources for finding emerging talent for the Residential academy system and COEs of the ISL club.
“As a club, one of our core philosophies is to promote grassroots football development in Kerala. Through this partnership, we hope to build on this belief by widening our reach, setting the right standards, and providing children with the right footballing education, so that they can best showcase their talents. Hopefully, the coming years will see players from this program representing the club in the ISL.”, says Mohammed Rafik, Director of Football, Kerala Blasters FC.
Sporthood’s co-founder, Arun V Nair, elaborated on his company’s vision for the same. “We plan to bring in training methods and technological capabilities to complement the curriculum and content that Kerala Blasters has developed for the Young Blasters Program. This cutting-edge solution will bring high-quality football training to the young children of Kerala. We plan to onboard as many as 100 new centres in the next 18 months as part of our expansion plan in Kerala. These Sporthood centres will provide children from the respective neighborhoods direct access into an international standard football training program”.
The Sporthood system will be used to standardise the content for players as well as coaches. Modern processes including real time progress tracking, online content and masterclasses will be made available to all players as well as coaches. Currently Sporthood is providing Virtual Coach classes to all aspiring footballers of the future. The classes are available through Sporthood app – available in both iOS and Android.
Scholarships & Exposure:
Sporthood’s scholarships further categorized into merit-based and means-based are applicable for talented students and financially weak students, who can’t manage to afford the training, respectively. In some special cases, we will consider offering a 100% fee waiver for the deserving candidate.
Know more about the Scholarships here.
To hone the talent and to enrich the competitive skills, the students in Young Blasters Sporthood Academy kids will be given opportunities to play in-house and regional tournaments.
