Shilton Eusebio Fernandes of Goa leads a 22-member under-13 football team to Dhaka today to participate in the AFC U-13 Football Festival scheduled to be held in the Bangladesh capital from May 4 to 9.

And as the name suggests, it is a festival of football where 13 teams from south, central and middle-east Asia will take part to play a different brand of soccer. And mind you, none of these teams is vying for any prize here, because there isn’t any. “This is an ideal way of promoting football at the grassroots level,” said AFC director of the Vision India programme Shaji Prabhakaran who is in charge of the national teams at the grassroots and youth level. “The basic idea is to make them play without any pressure,” added Prabhakaran on the AFC initiative.

“Let them enjoy, and play natural football as they know without thinking of winning or losing,” he added. The duration of the matches has also been changed. And instead of the usual 90 minutes game, matches here will be of 30 minutes (15 minutes half) and 60 minutes (30 minutes half) duration.

And as Prabhakaran explains this has a reason too. “To gauge the skill of the players,” he adds: “It is difficult for a youngster to be at his best for the whole of 90 minutes. But, in short duration they can display all their skills and technique.” Besides India, the other participating teams are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, Kyrgysztan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan , Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The Dhaka-bound team has been selected from the National Football Festival held in Chennai during 21 to 30 April.

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