Imphal, October 01: Stage has been set for the maiden launch of Asian Football Confederation's Vision India Project in Manipur from early next year with the arrival of AFC's expert team today in Imphal.

For launching the project in this part of the country, two AFC experts - Imtiaz Rehman and Jita Singh and AIFF Vision India co-ordinator Dr Shaji Prabhakaran arrived today and held discussions with officials of AMFA.

For development of football from grassroots level, the meeting decided to start tournament for school children in the age group of Under-13 at primary stage level in Thoubal.

Churachandpur and Bishnupur district from August next year.

The project will also start football development programme for youth stage between the age group of above 13 years and below 15 years in Imphal West, Imphal East and Churachandpur districts from September next year.

Besides the visiting officials, the meeting was attended by K Govindas, Minister YAS, A Santoshkumar, president AMFA, Ch Birendra, vice-president AMFA and Commissioner YAS, BC Singh, secretary MOA, L Tiken, director incharge SAI NRC, officials of YAS and members of various sub-committee of AMFA.

On the various bottleneck in implementing the project in schools at primary stage, Jita Singh said that a one day workshop will be organise on the theme 'Youth and Grass root in Football� inviting PSUs, organisations and experts before implementing the project.

It was also decided to conduct a five days training for coaches and teachers and one day clinic for referees.

Going into the finer details of the primary level project, eight schools from each district will be selected for participating in a tournament spanning over 40 weeks instead of conducting in a short time.

The tournament will start from August next year and will conclude in the month of October.

For the youth project, tournament will be held in the selected districts from the month of September next year.

On the nature of the competition, Jita Singh said that the tournament for grass root and youth should be held under the competition rules provided by AFC in the form of development not in favour of competition.

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