Bengaluru: India hosting the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup was supposed to mark a new beginning for Indian football but it instead exposed how far behind the country still was from the global standard.
Before the tournament, many believed India's real problem existed only at the senior level while there was optimism that the gap at youth level was much smaller. This belief stemmed from the fact that the Indian U-17 side managed to beat an Italian team during an exposure tour in Europe.
But once the World Cup began, reality hit hard with defeats against teams like the USA and Ghana, highlighting the enormous difference in pace, fitness and technical quality.
Then-India coach Roberto De Matos flagged the fallacies in Indian grassroots while comparing with strong footballing nations. Turned out, budding footballers enter structured systems as early as four or five years old and spend years competing regularly before reaching the U-17 stage.
That tournament forced Indian football to finally take grassroots development seriously as "Baby Leagues" emerged across the country. Some of the academies did begin to invest more in youth football before the momentum slowed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even then, most of the academies operate mainly from the U-11 level onward.
That's because convincing parents to send children into football systems at five or six years old remains difficult.
Bengaluru United seal Indian Football League promotion"It's something we faced from our scouting days," says Sunanda Das, chief of Alchemy International Football Academy. "Parents in many parts were unwilling to let their kids leave home and stay in residential academies when they are 5-6 years old. Things have changed over the years and parents are more open to such ideas, but it is still a big challenge."
That is where FC Porto, the former UEFA Champions League winners, believe they can make an impact through their collaboration with Alchemy Football Academy at the Dravid-Padukone Centre for Sports Excellence in Yelahanka.
"For Dragon Academy, we begin as early as three years old and go all the way to U-17," says FC Porto's Dragon Academy director Ricardo Frey Ramos. "At the lowest level, it starts with 1 vs 1, where young players simply go out there and enjoy football.
"The intention is to give them as much time with the ball as possible so they develop natural skills before gradually progressing through the age groups and eventually reaching the expert level at U-14 with 11 vs 11."
That philosophy may still feel unusual in India, where several top clubs won't start their youth programme before the U-14 level.
For Porto, though, Alchemy was a natural fit as the Bengaluru-based academy has spent over a decade focusing purely on youth football and currently trains more than 200 players from across the country alongside its residential programme.
Alchemy's earlier partnerships with clubs like Boca Juniors and Villarreal never fully delivered on expectations, so there will naturally be scepticism around this tie-up as well. After all, projects like these take years before results become visible.
Still, Ramos believes this partnership has stronger foundations because both sides share the same long-term vision.
"This will work because we were a fit from the word go," he says. "We were looking for an academy that had the desired infrastructure and also shared a similar vision for youth development," he concluded.