Football’s most important project begins

CAPE TOWN — The goal is to get soccer balls to 700 million elementary school children, most of them in the poorest or most remote corners of the world.

India alone needs 1 million balls, which will likely have to travel the length and breadth of the country by road to reach kids at about 10 000 schools.

“Can you imagine China?” said Fatimata Sow Sidibe, the director of FIFA’s Football For Schools project.

Overshadowed by the build-up to the World Cup, football has embarked on probably its most ambitious global youth development programme, with the monumental aim of delivering balls and a coaching programme to nearly half of the world’s children between the ages of 4 and 14.

Football For Schools was launched in 2019 but came to a grinding halt because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was relaunched this year and has an initial budget of US$ 100 million from

FIFA, about 1% of what Qatar reportedly spent just on its stadiums for this year’s World Cup.

And yet, “this is the most important project in the world of football,” said Steve Pila, who is managing the Football For Schools roll- out in South Africa, one of the pilot countries.

Football For Schools aims to send 11 million Adidas soccer balls to tens of thousands of schools, by air, sea and road. Schools will also get access to training routines via a free cellphone app. That changes the game because it allows any teacher to coach with the help of dozens of practice sessions designed for kids and available at the tap of a finger.

Many schools aren’t just short of balls. They also don’t have a dedicated football coach.

“Even a teacher in the most rural area is able to take young boys and girls together and, at the palm of your hand, you have something to do with them,” Pila said.

Pila said South Africa’s biggest problem is not enough good coaches and this “fills that gap just a little.” Simple, and hopefully effective. Development programmes are difficult to judge, especially when targeting such young kids. Any results are long-term and sometimes intangible. Football For Schools is unlikely to have a noticeable impact on the world game by the time the next World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico comes and goes, or even the one after that. It’s a 5-10-year project at least.

“Nobody is investing in this because there is no immediate return of investment,” Sow Sidibe said.

But youth programmes are priceless. All indications are that the world’s best players, the driving force of the game and the focus of the US$ 200 billion World Cup in Qatar, become the best because they had regular exposure to soccer before the age of 10. Lionel Messi was playing at a club in Argentina at the age of 4, way before Barcelona came calling. Cristiano Ronaldo was in a youth team on the Portuguese island of Madeira at 7.