Vedanta is committed to foster skill development through ‘Vedanta Sports’ and ‘Sesa Football academy’ (SFA) has been actively doing this since its inception in 1999. First campus of SFA was developed on the reclaimed Sanquelim Mine, with a vision to become a premier academy in India. It aims to develop quality footballers from the state of Goa and all across the country. SFA sets the environment for discovering, creating and building talent for Football. The academy identifies talented youngsters who are passionate about Football at the grassroot level. The academy inducts them into its residential programme and over a period of four years, nurtures and develops them into professional footballers and well-disciplined citizens.
In order to further expand the reach of the SFA, another residential academy was launched at Sirsaim, Goa in 2008. It is built on accountability to foster the holistic development of talented footballers. The academy aims at making its students stronger academically, athletically, socially, and emotionally, to become high-character leaders in sports and in life.
At present, SFA has two campuses:
(1) Sanquelim Campus, since 1999
(2) Sirsaim Campus, since 2008
Both the campuses impart extensive training comprising of physical, psychological, technical and tactical aspects along with taking care of nutritional needs of the players.
Within a span of over 21 years, SFA has groomed more than 230+ footballers and has made tremendous impact on the football fraternity across the country. Most of its alumni have represented the National team, I-League clubs and prestigious football clubs across the nation. 9 players have earned the National team cap and many alumni have played the elite Indian Super League (ISL). Some notable alumni of the academy are Adil Khan, Denzil Franco, Mickey Fernandes, Glan Martins and Pratesh Shirodkar. Over this period, SFA’s senior team has risen through the ranks in Goa’s regional leagues, and now finds its place in the Goa Pro League, the top division of Goan football. SFA has also expanded its reach through Vedanta Football schools. In order to provide a platform for women footballers, Vedanta Women’s league was launched in collaboration with Goa Football Association. The league is gaining enormous popularity with successful completion of 4 editions, reaching out to over 300+ aspiring women footballers.
Vedanta Sports
With a larger vision of giving back to the communities through Sports & transforming India into a global sporting powerhouse, Vedanta Group has been incubating various sporting programmes at the grass-root level. ‘Vedanta Sports’ was launched as an umbrella brand to create a unified narrative for all the sporting activities across the group. Vedanta Sports is expanding the reach of sports development initiatives across all corners of the country under the visionary leadership of Mr. Annanya Agarwal, President, Vedanta Sports.
The mission has been to provide equal access to opportunities of ‘Sports for All’ in line with national priorities. The major pillars of the initiative are Sports for Community & Sports for Excellence wherein the key priority areas are technology interventions, focus on women sports & nurturing sporting talents across the country for creation of sustainable livelihood opportunities.
Under the larger umbrella of Vedanta sports, two major grassroot football development projects namely Sesa Football Academy at Goa and Zinc Football Academy in Rajasthan have been contributing immensely to Indian Football. The Sesa Football Academy in Goa has rich legacy of more than 20 years in the ecosystem while the Zinc Football Academy, Rajasthan is 4 years old & it’s the first ever technology hinged academy in India. ‘ Dronacharya ‘ Archery academy has just been incubated in Jharkhand last year. The focus of the academies goes beyond the court or field of play when training students to include proper recovery techniques, injury prevention, and safe nutritional practices.