Sepp Blatter, president of the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA), describes India as “the sleeping giant of world football”. Bangalore-based Adhip Bhandary (29) has made it his mission to wake this sleeping giant. To this end in 2007 he re-located from Mumbai to promote the Bangalore Youth Football League Academy (BYFL) which has 50 students of both sexes aged under-10 and under-14 learning the nuances of the beautiful game.
A commerce graduate of Mumbai’s H.R. College where he captained the football team, Bhandary also captained the Bombay Gymkhana XI while working in Bhandary Metallurgical Ltd, the family-promoted metal rods manufac-turing firm in Mumbai. “Football is an affordable sport and requires only a football and open spaces and could, if encouraged, become the field sport of the masses,” he says.
In 2005 Bhandary moved base to Bangalore to work with Zee Zippers, an accessories manufacturing firm, as the head of marketing and simultaneously started a football training academy with an initial investment of Rs.45,000, on a playing field leased from the Veterinary Science College, Bangalore.
While coaching his first batch of 15 children, Bhandary became aware this was the vocation he had been looking for. Therefore to qualify as a football coach and trainer, in 2008 he signed up for a Masters degree in sports management and coaching with The International Olympic Committee, Lausanne. A year later he returned to Bangalore to work full-time with BYFL.
According to Bhandary, the BYFL training programme (priced at Rs.7,500 per quarter) is thorough and comprehensive, involving in-depth research and study of each student’s physiology, based on which an individual programme of physical training and diet is mapped. Socio-economically disadvantaged applicants are given scholarships. “We are not merely a football coaching academy, we are a sports and health academy which provides children state-of-the-art physical and health training topped up with thoroughly contem-porary coaching,” says Bhandary who doubles up as director and head coach, and also provides free-of-charge coaching to 30 children in two government schools in the garden city.
Uniquely, BYFL Academy has also bet heavily on developing women’s football. With classes specifically designed for women’s physical and nutritional needs, individual attention and focus is given to young girls to shape them up for a women’s football league, which BYFL intends to start up in the near future. “Women’s football has huge potential, especially at the school and college levels. We want to popularise football as a varsity sport by providing trained players,” he says.
With plans for starting a Karna-taka schools league, an inter-collegiate and a professional women’s league in Bangalore, Bhandary wants to simultaneously plant the BYFL flag in smaller cities such as Mangalore and Hubli. “Our prime objective is to nurture young talent, develop trained players and make football a national sport. It’s a very feasible proposition,” says Bhandary.
Many goals!
Bharati Thakore (Bangalore)