Norwich City looking to explore India’s untapped potential through MoU with Chennaiyin FC

It has been close to a year since Indian Super League (ISL) club Chennaiyin FC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with English Championship club Norwich City, focussing on grassroots and youth development.

And it has been an eventful few months for the Chennaiyin youngsters. Last October, they participated in the Mina Cup youth tournament, which featured top European clubs such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Inter Milan.

The competition saw the Chennaiyin U-12 team beat Borussia Dortmund 4-2 and finish 13th in the 16-team event.

Manipur-born attacker Nepolian Laikhuram, who scored all four goals, stood out from the rest and emerged as CFC’s top-scorer in the tournament, with six goals in total.

Akhil Prakash, COO, Chennaiyin FC, hopes that the partnership with Norwich will provide a platform for more such budding talents and eventually help the club as well as the national side.

“We have been constantly looking at 3 or 4 boys from the reserve team who have been part of the setup for the last 2-3 years. Some of these boys have been moved up, and a lot of them have trained with the senior team through this year. Owen (Owen Coyle, Chennaiyin head coach) was quite impressed with them,” said Akhil in an exclusive interaction with Sportstar.

“Going into the next season, you will see a lot of the young boys play in the Durand Cup, and if they impress the coaches, they might get a chance to enter the senior team,” he added.

Additionally, the teams joined hands in hosting a month-long inter-school competition in January this year, which saw 64 teams from various parts of the state participate. Out of the 1,200 kids who participated, 40 were handpicked to undergo trials for a spot in the Chennaiyin FC academy.

Barter system

While the partnership has provided a much-needed international exposure to the Chennaiyin lads, it has also helped Norwich in more ways than one.

With youngsters from Chennaiyin taking part in these programmes, the youth at Norwich Academy acquire an idea of the skill that players from the subcontinent possess. Meanwhile, Norwich has also benefitted on the commercial front.

“From our perspective, I think that perhaps it’s less from a technical standpoint but more from a sort of brand recognition and a commercial opportunity in India,” Sam Jeffery, Commercial Director, Norwich City FC, said.

“One of the reasons why India is being explored and one of the reasons why there is a sports summit hosted by probably the best sporting consultants in the world is because of the enormity of the untapped potential in the country,” he added.

Streamlining the grassroots

Despite being the most populous country in the world, India has not been able to compete with the footballing giants in terms of quality of players.

Perhaps the disparity between the populace and the limited access they have to a proper football academy is the reason. Currently, there are 79 AIFF-authorised football academies in India, with just five of them having four-plus stars (stars are awarded based on the facilities the academies possess).

On the other hand, the English footballing infrastructure is as robust as it can get. Of course, it has developed into what it is now due to decades of experiments and changes, but it has set a benchmark for its contemporaries.

The system saw a huge change in 2012 as the English Premier League unveiled its Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) across the professional game. The goal was to increase the number and quality of top homegrown players rising through the ranks, putting in set processes for the academies.

Following the introduction of EPPP, academies were segregated into categories, ranging from one to four, with one being the top.

Norwich City is one of the 24 English clubs to have a category one academy. Jeffery believes, although a long way out, India can take a leaf out of England’s book to unearth top talents across the country.

“We’re very proud to be a Category One Academy, but that’s taken years and years of dedication. To be precise, 10 years of candidates being constantly analysed and assessed every single year. With the population that India has and with enough financial backing, I vehemently believe the same could happen here,” he said.

Unified goal

Both the clubs are striving towards one goal – to popularise the sport and encourage kids to take it up as a profession.

“The ideal goal for us would be to make Norwich City as popular as some of its top six Premier League counterparts in India. It’s a fantastic organisation, and we want more kids to start following the club from a very young age. There’s so much to imbibe from the Norwich way of doing things,” Akhil said.

“As far as the partnership goes, it’s not just Chennaiyin or Norwich City, but the whole Indian football community will want our boys to go and make it big in England or other European leagues,” he added.