New football club in the city

Twenty-four-year old Siddarth Sabapathy had quit his job as a sports consultant in 2016 to open a football academy named ‘Sporko’ in Vile Parle to follow his passion for the sport. His aim was to do establish a simple facility for the youth. The same academy will be re-launched today as ‘Football Club of India’ (FCI) with experienced coaches and enhanced facilities.

With Vile Parle being the only centre, the club will have two bases in Colaba and Mumbai Central to operate from, says Siddharth who is the co-founder and the director of FCI.

Siddharth’s endeavours in football started in his school days. Heavily influenced by the sport, he had a fantasy of having his own football league that came true last year. He launched his league, which was named ‘Vile Parle Premier League’. “In our first year, the franchises bought teams for Rs 500-1,000 bucks where neighbouring businessmen were investing money. Soon it grew popular in the area and now it has been seven years since we started with a league for women as well,” he said.

It was because of his popularity in the vicinity that Sporko, his academy, flourished in a span of a year. “The academy was doing well with a few teams in different MDFA leagues. Then I approached Sudha (Sudhakar Rane, board member of MDFA) and we discussed this opportunity to come up with something bigger and better,” said Siddharth, explaining the need for change.

“After Mumbai FC has shut down, the zeal among the footballers has gone down and we don’t want that to happen. We will start at the grassroots level and then probably in 3-4 years, we will register the team in divisions of I-league,” he further added.

Siddharth did his Bachelor’s of Management Studies from ML Dahanukar College and then landed a scholarship at Leipzig University, Germany to pursue sports management.