The Grassroots Goals

Overcoming infrastructure crisis and challenges related to scarcity of funds, a community footballacademy in India—ARDOR Football Academy—is nurturing football talents in the remotest hamlets and slums.

Growing up in the dingy bylanes of Sabar Sahi slum in Bhubaneshwar city of India’s eastern state of Odisha, little did Chandan Nayak—a teenager—know that he would be trained in football by legends at Bayern Munich Football Club in Germany. Poverty and lack of resources were a deterrent to his dreams. But like a magic wand picks up the dust in no time, the adversities were swept off his road to success by the efforts of coaches at Ardor Football Academy (AFA) in Bhubaneswar. A magic wand to hundreds of slum kids and teenagers, the one-of-its-kind philanthropic academy ensures professional grassroots football training for all free of cost.

Having touched over 5,000 lives through football training so far, Ardor operates more than 18 community grassrootss programmes in three Indian states of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

Ardor – How it all began

In 2012, it came into existence with a single point agenda to develop football at grassrootss level in India and currently runs the largest and the most intensive well researched community soccer program in the country impacting more than 4000+ lives. “The bitter fact of zero penetration of any grassrootss football training academy in eastern India, which has a rich sports culture, inspired the AFA team to start the organisation. The academy was primarily focused on under-privileged kids through free training, thereby channeling their negative energy into something positive through the tool of football,” said Jaydev Mohapatra, the founder and CEO of the company with over 10 years of experience in football coaching.

Grooming young children from the ground up

The community grassroots programmes of the academy are run in the local grounds which are within the slum or village area so that it’s easily accessible to the kids. The academy provides free training, kits, exposure tours and trials to all kids free of cost. “Once a week, we also provide free nutrition. This helps us to attract kids in large numbers to our centres,” Mohapatra explained. Though running a community programme comes with its own set of challenges in the forms of ignorance and stigma, the academy has successfully overcome hindrances to establish itself among the tribal villagers staying in the remotest corners of the state.

“We have groomed and appointed Community coaches from amongst the community senior players, helping them get trained and get employed with us. This helps us understand the local challenges and keep deft control on the community kids. It also helps us build a sense of community feeling, friendship, camaraderie, and belongingness among the kids,” he added.

Convincing patrons, generating funds – The challenges

After about 10 years into running free community football programmes and free soccer camps, Ardor landed its first CSR project in 2021. Arranging sponsorships or raising funds for the academy has been challenging. “Currently, we have CSR tie up with about four Corporates, including PPL- Paradeep, Goel Group – Chhattisgarh, Vedanta – Jharsuguda and Falcon Group – Bhubaneswar. However, the journey has been arduous. Trying to convince Corporates to see the positive impact of sports in changing lives and bringing social change can take some humongous efforts. Even today, corporations have not warmed up to the fact that sports can bring incredible change into society on multiple fronts. Especially on gender equality, gender sensitisation, social equality, social behaviour, community bonding, community building, better life skills and building a healthy society with healthy habits. Sports have multifarious impact, however, corporate support and penetration in this field is miniscule. Thus, funding and running sustainable programmes are really challenging,” he claimed.

Journey so far and the feats

In the last 11 years of action on the ground, Ardor has been fairly successful in identifying, training, supporting, grooming and nurturing over 5,000 players across three states. “Today, we can proudly proclaim that Ardor has created 7 international youth players who have represented India in various age group events, 40+ youth I-league players who currently play for top Clubs across India and achieved 40+ top academy selections across India.

The youngest female footballer to participate in Indian Women’s League (IWL)—SulekhaKanhar—has been trained by the academy coaches. “ Besides, our player Chandan Nayak was selected by Bayern Munich. Players ShreejalKisku and SulekhaKanhar were scouted by SPF Rush from Spain. The youngest duo from our academy to get professional contracts are Sunil Soren and Ranjan Soren. We created the first institutional team to win the Senior Women  Professional State League that qualified for the IWL – Nationals- Mata Rukhmani FC – Chhattisgarh. We also created the youngest women’s team with an average age below 17 to qualify and play the IWL,” Mohapatra said, while citing the major achievements of his academy.

The road ahead for Ardor

So, what’s next? “Five years from now, we will see Ardor kids in every top club and academies across India. Ardor will be the best grassroots and youth academy in India. Ardor kids will not only represent the respective state teams but will also make huge inroads into the Indian teams. We dream to deliver the best international level players from India. The churning has started and today we have one of the best U-10, U-12 age group squads in India. Our key focus is scouting, identifying talent and bringing them to the best training facilities to groom them as best players in the country. We have created focus batches and hostels for the top talent to be trained together under the best coaches. We have clearly underlined the objectives and are running in that direction. We have also forged international tie-ups to provide a big platform for the kids to get trained in the best of the clubs and academies in Europe,” the founder explained.

Talking about the Indian Football scenario, Mohapatra believes that Indian football is way behind in comparison to International levels and top footballing nations.

“Primary reason for the same is the lack of professional grassroots-youth training programmes, academies and clubs. We cannot have a building without a foundation. In top sports and to become the best in the world, we have to start early and we have to have robust world-class training programmes for grassroots and youth.

Currently we don’t have any such systems,” he opined.

Training infrastructure needs an overhaul

Mohapatra believes there is a need to activate quality competitions at grassroots-level and youth-level across India. “Good competitive matches at this age groups are extremely important for development of players. Thirdly, implementation of Football programmes across schools is extremely important for penetration and growth of the game. Every other school today has a football ground as conceptualised since British era, however we don’t have coaches and trainers to help kids early learn the nuances of the game. Intervention is required to ensure coaching facilities at early age. More academies and clubs should focus on grassroots development rather than just focussing on playing top leagues,” he stated.

He also insists that every state should lay down the plan for such implementation and help private academies to come out and run such centres. “Initial support from the government is key to the success of the programme. Special mandate by the government to run multi-age inter school competitions will help the cause. Currently, we have lacklustre participation at the inter-school level. Employing top coaches at this level will help the overall objective. If today India decides to participate in the world cup, the journey has to start from grassroots-level and will take dedicated effort of at least 10 to 20 years to show results,” he claimed.

Ardor is growing, big plans ahead

But, did the academy receive any support from the state or country’s governments? “Till date we haven’t received any formal support from the Central and State governments as such. However, it is imperative to note that the government has helped us book grounds for certain events and matches, provided us with free tickets for our kids to watch International matches held in Bhubaneswar. We have requested the State government to formally recognise the community grassrootss programme running in slums and government schools, however it’s yet to see light of the day. Secondly, we have given multiple submissions and projects to the government, which can help the government roll out a robust grassrootss programme in the state. We have also asked the government to support us by providing ground allocation at key locations which can help us touch more lives through Football, yet we haven’t got any till date,” he said. As he hopes to get some support from the government, Mohapatra claims that every year, about Rs 48 lakh is spent to run the programme in 18 centres and the load has been substantially increasing year on year.