Upendra Man Singh, Santosh Sahukhala, Babukaji Dhaubanjar and many other footballers have proven that Bhaktapur doesn´t lack passion for football. However, no club from the district made it to the top-flight league. [break]
Last week, it changed when five-year-old initiative by a group of youths led by former captain Singh from Madhyapur Municipality to qualify into the A division league bore fruit.
Madhayur Youth Association (MYA) clinched promotion to the top division finishing second in the recently concluded B division.
A well-set plan of developing football from the grassroots with the motto ´football for education´ helped MYA grow faster than other clubs and achieve success in short period.
"When we saw a huge crowd turnout at an inter-school football tournament in 2006, we discussed the possibility of forming a club in the city," Manoj Adhikari, the team manager and treasurer of MYA remembered.
"We began the initiative for social change as we saw youths wasting time on useless pursuits and picking up bad habits," Singh said. "We thought we could change it all through football."
MYA began by making an open call to kids of the district to join football training program. "Around 700 kids turned out for the training within a year and we picked 30 talented boys to begin a football academy," said Asta Kumar Kaway, the MYA vice-president, who led the team in the absence of Singh.
MYA negotiated with schools in the city to provide educational scholarships to the players selected by the academy.
"There were only two football academies--one run by All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) and another run by Sahara Club, Pokhara. We were encouraged by what Sahara was doing," said Adhikari.
The establishment of the football academy helped MYA in two ways. "The scholarship we arranged for the players encouraged parents to let their children play football. On the other hand, the academy products played for us," added Singh.
MYA played C Division Qualifiers in 2007 but failed, despite providing players with all kinds of facility and gears. The failure forced them to rethink their plan and highlighted the need of strengthening the academy.
A year later, MYA qualified for the C division. Since then the club hasn´t look back, qualifying for B division in 2009 and for A division in 2011. The club registered 28 players for B division, 20 of them local boys trained by the MYA Academy.
"Schools and colleges co-operated with us. Donors helped us. Local people and Madhyapur Municipality provided us incredible support," said Singh. "Everyone wanted us to succeed as they saw we could be the pride of the district."
The five-year journey of MYA is a fairytale but the club is aware of the challenges it has to face in order to survive in the A division league. "We know that there is a huge difference in the standard of A and B division leagues," said Singh, who is currently the coach of Himalayan Sherpa Club.
MYA officials maintain that they would give priority to local players. "We´ll appeal the local players who are currently playing for the clubs outside the district to play for their home team," said Singh. "We´ll have professional deals with all players but the basic idea of giving priority to local players is that we can lower down the accommodation cost and gain more local support," he added.
MYA became the first club from Bhaktapur to play A division league and being a community based club, it is expected to draw huge crowd to stadium. There was drought of crowd in the other matches of B division league but MYA drew a crowd of few hundreds every time it played.
"I´m personally happy to see Madhyapur in A division. I expect a huge crowd in its matches as it is a community based club," said Ganesh Thapa, president of ANFA during a prize distribution ceremony of the B division league last week.
Singh said that MYA would also work to create employment oppotunities for its players at the local level. "We are producing football talents with sound education and we´ll try to create employment opportunities for them as well," said Singh revealing the club´s long-term plan.
"We´ll come up with a long-term plan to develop the academy by tapping the craze people in Bhaktapur have for football. We want to become one of the best football teams of the country," a confident vice-president Kaway said.
Strong team from Bhaktapur in 3 decades
Madhyapur Youth Association would be the first club from Bhaktapur district to play A division league football. None of the club from Bhaktapur made it this far in the past three decades.
"In 2039 BS, some youths from Bhaktapur formed a team called Bhaktapur XI and they played ´D´ division league. The team hoped to make it to the ´A´ division," recalled All Nepal Football Association Vice-president Lalit Krishna Shrestha, who is also the president of Three Star Club.
"Three Star Club had formed a second tier team to play D division. Our team was also strong. The D division was organized in knock out format and the organizers forced the two strong team to play each other in the semifinal. Our club knocked them out 1-0. After the incident they got frustrated with ANFA and never came back again," Shrestha added.
Bhaktapur XI had players like Milan Hada, Babukaji Dhaubanjar, Sunil Prajapati, Subarna Jung Sijapati, Uttam Amatya and Uttam Lochan Shrestha while Lalit Krishna Shrestha, Rabindra Joshi, Jaya Krishna Shrestha and Deepak Amatya were in the Three Star.
"We had very good team and we were expecting to reach A division but then ANFA leadership took a biased decision. We got frustrated. Some of our friends quit football while some of us joined Kathmandu based clubs," said Milan Hada.
"After that incident, no club from Bhaktapur came out strong enough to play leagues," he added.
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