24 young footballers get Reliance Foundation scholarship

As part of its commitment to develop grassroots level football in the country, the Reliance Foundation today handed out residential school scholarships to 24 hand-picked boys in the age group of 11-14 years.

Announcing the scholarships to the children, who had been selected via the grassroots programme of the franchise clubs of the Indian Super League, Foundation's founder and chairperson Nita Ambani said that in the first year itself the programme was able to reach out to five lakh children across the length and breadth of the country.

"From the 5 lakh children, 200 were picked to undergo a 10-day training here and from that lot 24 have been selected as Reliance Foundation Young Champs who will receive training under expert international coaches and trainers and will also get to study at the Reliance Foundation School in Mumbai (Koparkhairane)," she said.

The 200 children were shortlisted from football camps and selection trials organised by the eight ISL franchises and invited to Mumbai for the training overseen by Piet Hubers, technical director of the grassroot programme, and Marcus Vaessen, head coach of the programme.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani were among those present on the occasion along with cricketers Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan, apart from ISL club owners and Bollywood actors Ranbir Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham.

Fadnavis unveiled the brand new sports facility Jio Garden, which also has an artificial football turf, spread over 13,000 square metres at the Bandra Kurla Complex which is a joint initiative of Reliance Foundation and the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority.

Praising the joint initiative as "a beautiful facility", Fadnavis said, "I dedicate this entire facility (which also contains an underground two-level parking lot for 2000 cars) to the Mumbaikars. We want Mumbai graduate to become one of the smartest cities in India."
MMRDA chief UPS Madan described the facility as "world class" and one of the "jewels in BKC's crown".

To encourage the ISL clubs to continue and improve their grass roots programme, Nita Ambani - who is also the founder and chairperson of Football Sports Development Limited - also announced a cash reward of Rs 2 crore to the best two clubs in undertaking this initiative.

Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor, owner of ISL team Mumbai City FC, received the top prize of Rs 1.25 crore, while Delhi Dynamos team owner Sameer Manchanda received Rs 75 lakh as the runner-up reward.