2nd South Mumbai Junior Soccer Challenge

The talk about an English club in Indian hands is about Blackburn Rovers and their new owners Venky's, but meanwhile Queen's Park Rangers FC, who have Indian co-owners in the Mittal family, are continuing in their quest to help Indian talent as two kids from Mumbai to get a chance to attend a six-week training camp at the London based club. This year two Mumbai kids had been to the QPR Academy to traing within their set-up.

The second edition of the South Mumbai Junior Soccer Challenge was yesterday inaugurated by the chief guest Praful Patel, the AIFF president. Also present at the inauguration were football loving Bollywood star John Abraham along with South Mumbai MP Milind Deora plus QPR chairman Ishan Saksena and the clubs vice-chairman Amit Bhatia.

The soccer challenge has the same format as last year in which south Mumbai schools face each other in a 5-A-Side format. The tournament is for boys and girls in the age groups of 8 to 11 years and 11 to 14 years. The tournament will be played at the Cooperage Ground over this weekend and on December 11. In total over 2,500 children will be taking part from across 300 schools.

The tournament is serving as a 'talent hunt' and coaches from the QPR Academy will pick 30 kids for a coaching clinic in Mumbai and from this clinic the two best players will be chosen for a six week training program at the Queens Park Rangers Youth Development Centre in London.

South Mumbai MP Milind Deora said, "We have a rich source of intelligent and vibrant youth. To keep this source sturdy, 'Sports' is an effective medium. It ensures a healthy lifestyle and fitness amongst these future citizens. With this initiative I hope to make Mumbai the capital of 'sports' in India. This championship will provide a uniform platform to potential sports stars of tomorrow across all social and civic strata in the city. I wish to encourage youngsters to adopt football so that we can place India on the sports global map. Hopefully in the FIFA World Cup 2018 there will be a strong team from India participating."

Deora added, "It indeed is great to see this initiative receive such amazing response from students across all backgrounds. Last year we had 200 schools participating and this year the number has increased by 30%. This year the participation from the girls has also increased. Hope every year the number of students keeps rising."

A really good initiative by Milind Deora with support from QPR, who as an English Championship club are involved in trying to develop talent in India, more then what some of the EPL biggies are doing in India...