Goa Football Development Council (GFDC) being the premier grassroots football development organisation in the state has chalked out a one day program to celebrate the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Grassroots Day 2017 on May 15 for the 5th consecutive year. The event will be held at SAG Athletic Stadium, Bambolim from 2.30 pm to 6.30 pm.
Panaji
According to Dr Rufino Monteiro, the Chairman of GFDC, the one- day festival will be conducted as per the new guidelines issued by the AFC. “All Football which is Non-Professional / Non-Elite is part of Grassroots Football. Which means now Children’s Football, School Football, Futsal, Beach football, Women’s Football, Veterans Football, Community Football, Amateur Football, Disability Football comes within the ambit of the newly expanded definition of Grassroots as announced by the AFC,” he said.
“This year we are celebrating AFC grassroots day on Monday and our focus at GFDC is on grassroots development. We have included differently-abled youngsters to be part of our festival as an initiative to make the grassroots programme all inclusive,” said GFDC Member Secretary, Aleixo Da Costa.
The event will start with two rounds of grassroots festival for the U-12 grassroot trainees of GFDC wherein 225 trainees have been selected from across 30 centres and this will go on from 2.30 pm to 4.05 pm. Consequently, it will have slots for Special Olympics match (boys), Girls GFDC pre academy match and veterans football match (50 plus) alongside the social cause with an appeal to youth to kick drugs and alcohol and play football.
All the events will be conducted by GFDC senior and grassroots coaches under the over-all supervision of Technical In Charge of GFDC, Derryl D’Souza. The concluding function will be held at 6. 10 pm which will be graced by Goan football legend Bernard Pereira and a current ISL player from Goa, Sahil Tavora.
