Tata Football Academy cadets to train at Sheffield United FC

Jamshedpur's Tata Football Academy, one of India's premier youth football development centres, will be travelling to the English city of Sheffield next month to visit their tie-up partners Sheffield United FC, an English League One club (third tier of English football).

The senior batch of TFA cadets will visit Sheffield, the first TFA trip to Europe since 2004 when they had visited the English south coast town of Southampton. Earlier TFA used to visit the Sports University of Cologne in Germany regularly though their last visit there was in the late-1990s for exposure and training under local German coaches.

"A 20-member team of senior players accompanied by four coaches would leave on September 1 to undergo a three-week advanced training till September 22 under their professional coaches," TFA Senior Manager M.R. Bhalla told PTI.

Since 2010 the Tata Football Academy has a technical tie-up with Sheffield United FC under which the English club is helping and assisting TFA with coaching and technical expertise to develop the Academy and their cadets. There have been numerous visits by the coaching staff from Sheffield United FC's youth development system to Jamshedpur, now this will be the first visit of TFA cadets to Sheffield.

The trip is about learning and training under professional guidance besides also getting match exposure against English youth teams from Sheffield United FC.

Sheffield: Two clubs share same sponsors

The city of Sheffield has another first in football. Sheffield FC was the worlds first football club; but these days the top two clubs in the city are Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday.

Both clubs will play this season in the English League One (third Division from top) after Wednesday were relegated last year and United only a few weeks ago. Both are making a new start in League One with an aim to get promoted.

Now both clubs have signed a joint sponsorship deal with the firms Gilders Group (a Volkswagen dealer) and Westfield Health (a health insurance firm) which is said to be worth a six-figure sum for both sides.

That two sides in the same city have the same sponsor has happened before, e.g. in Scotland at Glasgow Rangers and FC Celtic or in India with East Bengal and Mohun Bagan who are co-owned and sponsored by the United Breweries Group.

The speciality in Sheffield is the fact that both clubs will sport different jersey's home and away, then when both sides where in talks with local companies many said that they would not like to sponsor one of the local Sheffield sides as either the Blades or Owls fans would be against such sponsors.

The deal sees Sheffield United sporting the Westfield Health logo in their home matches and the Gilders logo in their away games, while Wednesday will have the Gilders logo in their home games and Westfield Health in their away matches.

TFA tie-up with Sheffield United

The Tata Football Academy and English Championship side Sheffield United FC yesterday signed a three year partnership deal in Jamshedpur under which TFA will get technical expertise from the English club plus get international exposure to their coaches and cadets. The deal has been a long time coming with being on and off over the last couple of years, but finally it has been signed and hopefully it will help the youngsters get better ahead of bigger tasks ahead.

Under the deal the Championship side will formulate a 12-month programme on coaching, fitness and professional development of coaches to enhance and professionalise the training programme at the Academy, while TFA coaches will also visit the academy of the English club, and a handful of promising players from the Indian academy will have the opportunity to train with the Sheffield club.

I feel it is a very good step by the Tata Football Academy management as I myself had visited Sheffield United FC in March 2009 and had seen their administration, facilities and plans to grow as a club. It looked pretty impressive to me for a club which only plays Championship football. But Sheffield United are a prime example of a second tier club sometimes being potentially a better partner for a developing country like India rather then a big European club side.

Vice president of Tata Steel, which sponsor and run TFA, Sanjiv Paul, said: "Tata Football Academy, the first professional football academy of the country, has rendered yeoman services to the cause of Indian football for the last 23 years. The national football team and all A Division clubs have a large presence of TFA cadets."

"The tie-up with Sheffield United Football Club will open a new chapter in offering advanced professional training for the cadets of TFA and give them an opportunity to expose them to professional football. We look forward to the tie-up as a beginning to a new phase where we hope that our cadets will raise the bar in Indian football and hopefully improve its world ranking.”

For the Tata Football Academy, founded in 1987, this is the first kind of a partnership with an European club. Over the last few years especially English Premier League clubs have shown interest to partner with TFA, but no partnership of any form was signed though initial talks had been held.

For those who don't know Sheffield United FC they will be surprised to learn that this isn't the first foreign partnership signed by the South Yorkshire based club. Actually the Blades, the nickname of the club, own foreign teams and have numerous partnerships in place. Sheffield United own the Chengdu Blades in China and Hungary's Ferencváros Budapest; while the Blades also have partnerships with Central Coast Mariners of Australia, White Star Woluwé of Belgium and Brazil's Sao Paolo FC.