AIFF’s (All India Football Federation) latest initiative is the BLUE CUBS program, which started this year on May 15th, 2024. This initiative aims to develop the young youth’s ground-rooted football skills. They promised they would give all the facilities required from nutricians to the best coaches to develop the early age of the youth. But can this Blue Cubs program benefit the youngsters of our nation? Will this Blue Cubs program be a success?
So what exactly is Blue Cubs and what challenges they have faced, Let’s read about it! In India, this is the first time this federation is taking the initiative to make the foundation stage of youngsters stronger, but in Japan, people were already using this type of tactic to make the youth smarter from an early age and make them prepare for the future national team.
It is said that a young mind is in the learning stage and full of curiosity and also eager to try new things, so to make them learn better this Blue Cubs program tries to achieve their aim, by the time they grow up, there won’t be any difficulties to teach the players from the start, just need to do little polishing and next star of football is ready to shine in international and national games. But again the question is, can this program achieve its goal and aims?
Football and the constant challenges since independence to this date
Do you know that the Indian football team ranked 125th in FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) recently? Now why do we rank so low? The answer is, not being consistent! Not just that, there is no proper field to play, no proper training coaches, and especially not enough infrastructure, lack of facilities, lack of exposure, lack of experience to play top levels of the game, well in the earlier time we had less exposure so of course there would lack of experience.
Although football doesn’t require lots of equipment to play that too is difficult to get funds and support from the government, the public, and AIFF. Sadly this would be a dream for Indians to play in FIFA as we lost the qualification match by just getting 1 win out of 6 games. However, AIFF has always tried to create top-level national leagues so that the players can get the chance to play in this competitive world.
For the ground root development, people always ignore the fact that we have talented youth but lack chances to play. If the youth’s foundation is not focused then India will never be able to prove themselves that they deserve to play in this highest level of matches or leagues. First of all, Indian parents appreciate cricket, badminton, and basketball but not football, the reason for the popularity of audiences in selective sports. Secondly, in the history of football Indian team won only the 3 biggest matches but comparably other sports won more than just 3.
In FIFA 1950, India qualified to play but India withdrew from the match as they were not well prepared to compete and play in such a big match. Well, maybe that’s where India got the luck and from 1951-1962 is called the golden era of Indian football. Under Syed Abdul Rahim India became one of Asia’s best teams and won the GOLD in the Asian Games,1962 which was hosted by India. If today we had quality players who were trained properly to compete in FIFA then at least we could have won the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
So we do have the ability to win such big games but we don’t have the proper infrastructure to learn to play football, even though AIFF got involved in something bad recently AIFF is the only support system India has when nobody can help! Just like BLUE CUBS AIFF has other initiatives too like ISL (India Super League), Vision 2047, Supercup, and many other remarkable initiatives.
Dreams can be Real with the Help of Blue Cubs
The ground root is the crucial stage that other countries mainly start focusing on that’s why their ground foundation is also strong enough to win, so inspired by them AIFF took the initiative to start BLUE CUBS for the age of 4-12 years. This program focuses on the youth’s growth healthily by having excellent nutritionists, trained coaches, scouters, proper infrastructure, a variety of pitches, and all types of facilities like bathrooms. They are determined to deliver what they promise. That’s why they working on connecting with funders, stakeholders, schools, and other educational centers.
Japan is always way ahead of everyone, even in sports too! It is their culture to start participating in sports when they start walking, on the other hand, many people in India believe more in playing with toy cars and Barbie dolls! Even the UK is way ahead of us. There PE (Physical Education) has been a compulsory subject in schools since 1992, whereas in India, PE became compulsory in 2019. So here we can see how behind we are! Maybe it will take years to reach their level today if this is the condition. To make the conditions better BLUE CUBS came to act and now Indians also have the opportunity to become like Japan and the UK.
CONCLUSION
Know that, BLUE CUBS is an initiative of AIFF that started on May 15th, 2024 for the ground root development. It is a program made only for children aged 4 – 12 years old; the Indian football team ranked 125th in FIFA. The program focuses on fostering children from the ground root. In earlier times we had less exposure, a lack of facilities, ETC. Now Connected and Collaborated also partnered with schools, in FIFA we lost the qualification match by just getting 1 win out of 6 games; So equal opportunity is what they mainly focus on in their complete program. This program focuses on the youth’s growth healthily by having excellent nutritionists, trained coaches, scouters, proper infrastructure, and many more.
“CHANCE TO OUR FUTURE STARS”