Through the months of January and February, India witnessed the battle of the best of footballers across schools at the Tata Tiago School Football Championship (SFC), in the 4 cities of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Pune. This is a unique tournament in its second year of existence, aiming to create a platform for children from all walks of life to make it big in the sport.
SFC is organised by Just For Kicks, a football non-profit working with under-resourced government & private schools across the country, and Soccer Connections, an entity that provides high-quality football coaching to children in Mumbai. The tournament saw massive support from Tata Tiago - Title Sponsors, Enerzal - Energy Partners, BookASmile and Veling - Charity Partners, Uber - Mobility Partners, The Marwah Group - Equipment Partners, and Mumbai City FC - Technical Partners, across the four cities.
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SFC brings together children from international, middle, and low-income schools alike, to play a league format and compete to be the best in their city. Once teams advance from the group stages, the Regional Champions from all four cities travel to Mumbai to play at the National Finals. SFC 2017 was intensive and large-scale, seeing over 4000 students, with more than 50,000 children involved in the whole event through their schools.
Speaking on behalf of the organisers of SFC, Neha Sahu, Co-Founder of Just For Kicks, stated “SFC was conceptualised with the intention of creating a high-quality league that caters to any child that plays football. Today, in its second year, after going from 2500 to 4000 participants, we can confidently say that this is a platform that has the potential to create careers in the sport and build a strong yet healthy competitive culture amongst all schools.”
National Finals
It was the clash of the crème de la crème at the National Finals with 260 children from all 4 cities vying for the championship in each of the eight categories. The championship trophies were taken home by the following teams:
| Age Category | National Champions | Runners Up |
| U-10 Boys | St. Anne’s (Mumbai) | Inventure Academy (Bangalore) |
| U-10 Girls | Greenwood High (Bangalore) | Sitaram Mill Compound MPS (Mumbai) |
| U-12 Boys | Greenwood High (Bangalore) | Pandit Deendayal PMC (Pune) |
| U-12 Girls | Inventure Academy (Bangalore) | Sitaram Mill Compound MPS (Mumbai) |
| U-14 Boys | Sreenidhi International (Hyderabad) | Utpal Shangvi Global School (Mumbai) |
| U-14 Girls | Arya Vidya Mandir (Mumbai) | Matoshri EMS (Pune) |
| U-16 Boys | Shindewadi MPS (Mumbai) | iTeach Ahilyadevi Holkar(Pune) |
| U-16 Girls | Arya Vidya Mandir (Mumbai) | Acharya Vinoba Bhave EMS (Pune) |
Scouts from Mumbai City FC watched the games scouting for talent to further professionally and SportsQ set up technical skills assessment corners at the venue.
