FIFA football seminar nets hundreds

Photo by Larry Fabian 

THE HUGE gap in age in the country’s football setting has urged the Philippine Football federation to push for a comprehensive grass root program.

Close to 500 young football enthusiast ranging from 6-12 years old trooped to the BSU football grounds Saturday morning to be part of the first grassroots training program organized by the Baguio-benguet Football Association in cooperation with the Philippine Football Federation.

The one day drills and skills training brought former Japanese player and technical director of the Japanese football squad Takeshi Ono as one of the speakers of the weeklong seminar culminated by the one day football festival.

“Actually ito yung pang-apat na grassroots program na ginawa natin dito sa bansa which started sa San Carlos City in Negros Occidental, Iloilo, Davao for the Mindanao leg and, Baguio-Benguet for Luzon,” said Marlon Maro, an instructor for elite coaching under the PFF.

The seminar was also supervised by a representative from FIFA coming from Malaysia.

This grassroots program which is being implemented by FIFA, according to Maro is to develop the interest of the children in playing football and strengthen the base of the grass roots particularly in football.

“The program would be a good feeder for the country’s national football squad kasi malaki yung gap between our 17 under and the seniors team that is why the program is one of filling that gap,” added Maro.

Photo by Larry Fabian

Maro said under the new approach, systems will be implemented where kids will register and will be assigned to teams. Afterwards, they will be ushered to different stations in the training system where they will be coached and mentored on every aspect of their game and skills.

Following the different training systems, kids will be brought to a tournament station where they will apply the coaching they received from the different training systems.

With this kind of grassroots program which he hopes to sustain because of the support being given by FIFA and the PFF. “We want to see in the near future na purong pinoy ang naglalaro na para sa Phl football team,” Maro added.