Spanish football club Barcelona launches FCBEschola schools in Mumbai

Well known Spanish football club FC Barcelona on Wednesday announced the launch its FCBEscola Football Schools here.

The FCBEscola Football Schools will start in mid-September at the Don Bosco High School in Matunga and St Dominic Savio High School in suburban Andheri.

The schools will cater to over 1,000 budding footballers. The club had held its first five-day camp here in 2013 in which over 200 young footballers had participated. The schools will be under the supervision of FCBEscola Project Director Albert Moratalla, the son of FCBarcelona legend Josep Moratalla, who was involved in the initial stages of the FCBEscola India project. Albert will be selecting, educating and mentoring local coaches in inculcating the FCB methodology and values.

"It is a year-long programme and not a camp as such. It is for 36 weeks. We give a lot of value to our partners and are very selective about it. Barca and our values coincided so did Don Bosco's values. So, it was a good mix of both, the infrastructure was good, they have good footballers produced by them and the main thing was numbers," Anupama Jain, Director Conscient Football, told reporters here.

"So the capacity is about 500 in each centre. We keep around 10 per cent of scholarships all across depending on the players we get and we are focusing on the age category 6-18 years," she added. "We have shared the infrastructure (with Don Bosco) and they are helping us with the facilities," said Jain.