Sant Cugat: The catalyst for better football in Anantapur

Sant Cugat Esport FC coaches during the opening ceremony of the football coaching camp in ASA

After a relaxing holiday season followed by a few friendlies with Bengaluru FC and Jain International Residential School, the Anantapur Sports Academy (ASA) has welcomed a much-awaited visit by Sant Cugat Esport FC.

The ASA hosts two Football camps during the year, one in the month of May when CF Sant Vicenti visits them for a summer coaching camp and one in July by Sant Cugat Esport FC. These camps help to develop football in Anantapur, however both of them look at developing “The Beautiful Game” with their own special touch.

Sant Cugat has been visiting Anantapur for the past few years now, and their focus has been on training the ASA academy and mandal teams in a structured and scientific manner, to ensure the continual development of young talent throughout the different age-groups and various program levels of the ASA.

The Sant Cugat coaches conduct the training with the global methodology of football following three micro cycles:

Defending principles of pressure: where the defenders, based on their formations, press the attackers to overturn possession.

Transitions from attack to defense: counter attacks by zoning out the field and maximizing usage of space on the field, feeding the ball to these free zones to put their opposition on the back foot.

Positional Attacking: Position specific moves that give teams the edge through a systematic pattern of attack.

(L) Sant Cugat coach overseeing a cool-down session. (R) Iliea Oleart, Head coach Sant Cugat doing video analysis for academy teams.

The training has been further broken down into two major phases, wherein Sant Cugat focus on defending principles and transitions from attack to defense during the first phase and positional attacking in the second phase.

They train the academy boys in the morning and the evenings, but during the day the coaches make their grassroots visits to schools and mandals of Anantapur, scouting for future talent. They have been working with the players both on and off the field, with regular training sessions as well as a few indoor sessions where they analyze the team’s performance through video analysis, making notes for trainings and advising the players on critical aspects of their game.

“Over the last three years, we have observed a great improvement in the academy performance, which has given us the opportunity to teach them more complex concepts, global methodologies of football. Simultaneously we shall continue to train the beginners on technical aspects while we aim to promote girls football as RDT plans to begin a girls’ league for football.”

“We come here to teach but while we do so we learn a lot from them as well. Initially we saw this as a social objective but now we are more focused on the sporting perspective, and we are proud of our association with RDT” said Iliea Oleart, the head coach of Sant Cugat Esport FC.