NEW DELHI: Seventeen coaches including several prominent ex-international footballers participated in the first of three All India Football Federation (AIFF) Grassroots Leader Courses hosted in Imphal, Manipur and organized by Tata Trusts that concluded at the Eastern Sporting Union Ground on Sunday (May 5, 2019).

The four-day course, conducted by AIFF Instructors Shailesh Karkera and assisted by Kuntala Ghosh Dastidar, focused on coaching methodology at various youth age groups as well as Introduction to Futsal.

Surkumar Singh, one of India’s most decorated footballers in recent memory reflected on his experiences over the four days of learning. 

“These past four days have been an eye-opening experience for me personally. To understand how children behave at different ages and the methods used to train them was something I found fascinating. This course helped me immensely and in turn I hope that I can inspire and coach my kids to become better players,” he said.

 Khelemba Singh - a Hero I-League winner with Salgoacar SC, one of the rare footballers to have donned the colours of both Kolkata giants East Bengal and Mohun Bagan, and current Technical Head of Tata Trusts in Manipur spoke about his experiences of the course.

“Having already attended the D and C License courses, I was not expecting the amount of knowledge and relevant content that this course provided and it was delivered to us by the instructors in a format which was very easy to understand. The Futsal session was very interesting because I was personally under the impression that it is easier to play Futsal since it is a small format but now I realize it is extremely demanding and you need to have a lot of technical ability to play the sport," he said.

The course concluded with a Grassroots Football Festival that involved a total of 85 children engaging in a series of matches and technical workshops.