BVB announces grassroots programme to develop youth football

Chennai, Sep 17 (): Leading German football club Borussia Dortmund (BVB) on Tuesday announced a grassroots programme that aims at developing youth football and imparting knowledge to Indian coaches.

The club's partnership with World1 Sports will look to make the most of the Bundesliga club's technical prowess to further bolster grassroots development across India.

"We are honored to be here in India and to forge this relationship.

We have always been keen believers in the development of youth football and are hoping we can guide and find a way to develop youth football in India,"Suresh Letchmanan, Dortmund's Managing Director of the Asia-Pacific region, said here.

"At the same time, we also want to use this opportunity to win more Black and Yellow hearts and at the same time build the BVB brand further into India," he added.

He further said the objective was to see how children and coaches in India can be trained in the BVB way, with no shortcuts.

"We hope we can eventually find players that could live their dreams to play in the local league here in India.

Thats the first step and hopefully then take the bigger step of playing in Asia and in Europe in the possible future, he added.

This partnership marks Borussia Dortmunds first major outreach towards the Indian football community.

The partnership will look to leverage the globally renowned technical expertise of BVB and W1 Sports know-how of he Indian football landscape to promote grassroots development across India.

Vikram Rajkumar, Chief Operating Officer, World1 Sports, said, "We are delighted to partner with Borussia Dortmund, one of the widely respected and recognised clubs in world football today.

Our vision is to create and drive a 'Sports First' philosophy in the country.

We want to build and provide a structure for football in India that allows sports persons and communities to concentrate on achieving footballing excellence."

W1 Sports drives developmental projects in Tamil Nadu, Mizoram and Manipur.

W1 Sports has partnered with Velammal institutions to strategise and execute their overall sports vision by creating various after school programmes across 46 schools run by the Velammal Group.

As part of the engagement, W1 Sports will be creating in-school leadership programs and monitor the performance of sports school against predefined indicators. SSAPR APR APR