Explained: What is AIFF's latest project "Blue Cubs"?

It is one of the new initiatives by the governing body for football in India to develop the sport.

All India Football Federation (AIFF) recently launched its strategic roadmap known as the 'Vision 2047' project. It strives to uplift the standards of Indian football by revamping the current structures across various levels, such as grassroots and women’s football among others.

It is no surprise that grassroots football needs a lot of attention from the AIFF and other responsible organisations in order to make India a strong force in the world of football. Grassroots football plays a vital role in nurturing talent, promoting the sport at the grassroots level, and building a strong foundation for the future of Indian football.

The AIFF Executive Committee held a press conference on Friday to announce a few key projects that will work towards achieving the objectives from Vision 2047 roadmap. One of the key programmes that AIFF will initiate is the Blue Cubs. Let us take a look at what it is:

Blue Cubs

The Blue Cubs is going to be a comprehensive grassroots programme. The main objective of the initiative is to help in developing the foundation for Blue Tigers. Blue Cubs also contains an elite multi-dimensional grassroots developmental programme. It will collaborate at multiple levels including government NGOs, clubs and other stakeholders of Indian football including the public and private sectors.

Despite football having a significant fan following across the nation, the development of the sport has often faced challenges, including a lack of infrastructure, limited resources and more for the young players.

This makes it tough to develop world-class players that would one day represent the national team - the Blue Tigers. The Blue Cubs programme strives to work towards engaging 35 million children in football by 2026 and take the number up to 100 million by 2047 - numbers that are projected in the Vision 2047 roadmap by the AIFF.

Words by the Secretary-General

The AIFF Secretary General, Shaji Prabhakaran spoke while announcing these initiatives and said, “We made our vision and our goals very clear and published and articulated them. We will use them as the guiding light and the principles for our work going forward.”

“We have never had a comprehensive grassroots structure and initiatives and we hope that through Blue Cubs and Project Diamond, we will be able to have a robust grassroots and an elite player development structure in our system," he continued.