Panaji:

The Salgaocars were out there in full force.Clad in green, like he always does when it comes to the club’s matches or functions, there was club president Shivanand Salgaocar and Ranjana Salgaocar. Vice-president Swati Salgaocar was leading the way; then there was club’s general secretary Adlear D’Cruz, team manager Sanjeev Nagvenkar and, a little while later, even coach Norbert Gonsalves made his presence felt. On the field, there were at least 30 coaches and almost all their senior players.Dragging all of them together to the Panchayat ground in Chicalim on an overcast Sunday should need some effort. But this was no ordinary day; every Sunday, this time of the year, Salgaocar’s flagship event – community outreach programme – kicks off and nobody from the Salgaocar family would give that a miss.For five years now, the programme spread across 20 Sundays sees approximately 700 kids between the ages of six to twelve, get out of their homes and take to the football field. Their parents watch from the sidelines, and as the kids – with a large number of girls -- enthusiastically kick the ball around not knowing what the future has in store for them, the club’s coaches and scout maintain a hawk’s eye.“Over the past couple of years, we have started segregating the more talented players and make them train separately. They train as a group right from the beginning till March (when the programme concludes). They then get integrated into the youth development set-up. Rather than just coming here on a Sunday, training and having fun, we’ve ensured that the better players move up the ranks,” said Swati Salgaocar, the club’s vice-president (youth development) and the driving force behind the initiative.Salgaocar’s pull-out from the I-League last season has helped the club direct all its energy towards youth development. Several of their players, including star striker Liston Colaco, have been allowed to move on to pastures greener, but the club has not lost track of what it had originally set out to achieve.“In a strange way, getting out of the I-League has been a blessing in disguise. We were not really confident of the way forward. Rather than putting in more and more money in a system where we don’t really see the returns, we thought it was best to refocus our efforts to what the original philosophy of our club was.“The club was started more to give Goan players a platform and training that would help them develop. Rather than just focus on the first team, we have now started doing what we always wanted: Start younger and younger,” explained Swati.It can’t get any younger, or better, than this.