Andhra girls play ball in LaLiga academy

Chennai: It started as a modest initiative in 2018 where LaLiga India distributed t-shirts for the Rural Football League in Anantpur, a city located in southern Andhra Pradesh. Today, the project is bringing joy to more than 3,000 girls and boys in the Rayalaseema region, where football is not particularly popular otherwise.Collaborating with Vicente Ferrer Foundation’s Rural Development Trust, LaLiga India have now come up with a women-only residential football academy in Anantpur, which their managing director Jose Antonio Cachaza says is the first of its kind in India. Former Valencia forward and LaLiga ambassador Anair Lomba visited the academy and trained the players for a week. The interaction with the kids reminded Lomba of her playing days. “I had to stop playing football a year ago due to persistent injuries. For the first time in a long while, I felt this emotion of competitive football again. It is a really powerful feeling,” she said.The former professional footballer added that observing the girls’ gameplay at the academy would help improve their training techniques to take player development forward in the future. “For us, the most important thing is to train the coaches to evolve. Coaches know what’s best for the team and for every player, so they are the primary allies for growth,” she said.A key mid-term objective of the initiative is to take these young players to Spain and have them play with other teams there. “That will be a very good opportunity for them to learn more about other cultures and styles of play,” the LaLiga ambassador said.She also stressed having the right perspective while playing. “Just yesterday, I had a meeting with the girls and one of them asked me about the mental aspect of the game. I told her to forget about pressure and just enjoy. It’s true that football is a profession for many (like it used to be for me), but sometimes we forget that this is a game and it is supposed to be enjoyed.”