The Thaabit Ahmed Football Academy (TAFA) successfully organized and completed the AC Milan Junior Coaching Camp at the Colombo Race Course grounds.
The Milan Junior Camp program is the official camp program of the Italian club, AC Milan, and the first stepping stone in a follow-up program for young talents that feature the characteristics and values the club is seeking for in athletes.
It’s a recreational program that serves the dual purpose of entertaining while also identifying those highly qualified talents from an early age.
The Milan Junior Camp, the first of its kind, ran for five days from the 19th to the 23rd of December 2015, with 30 students each from the under 10 & under 13 age groups.
The camp was conducted by two Milan coaches, Danilo Tedoldi and Marco Pompili, both leaders in their field.
“For us it has been a great week, great experience. TAFA is a good organization and was well prepared. We had a great time giving our knowledge in technical and tactical aspects,” added Danilo, who represented a few clubs in Serie A.
There is good talent here. It was a big surprise for us because we’ve observed seven or eight good players,” mentioned Danilo who has been in Milan Youth sector for 22 years.
The Thaabit Ahamed Football Academy (TAFA), founded in 2009, was established with the aim to provide quality football coaching in Colombo and eventually Sri Lanka.
“It has been a long journey. Six years ago we started with just a few kids and myself. Now we have 12 squads under TAFA with 6-8 coaches,” Thaabit added speaking exclusively with ThePapare.com
The Academy’s focus is to raise the profile of the game in Sir Lanka, starting at the grass root level, training youngsters ranging across 6 age groups ranging from 3 to 18 years of age.
“Plan was to provide children to play football and give them high quality private coaching. Mainly we want to change the face of football in Sri Lanka globally and want to provide and produce national players, international standards. We hope and we see ourselves as the future of Sri Lanka football,” he went on to say.
The foundation arm of TAFA proudly boasts of 40 student who are in full scholarship as a part of the academy.
“Really grateful for my team, it has been a family effort in making this possible (AC Milan Junior Camp). The relationship with AC Milan is a growing one which started early this year,
“Long way to go, the energy is picking up. We’ve been there for six years but the last year or so have been the most active and hope to go a long way,” Thaabit finally added with a glint of excitement in his eyes.
