Dreams Turn Into Reality As Zawar Breathes New Life Into India's Grassroots Football

Year 2010, an 11-year-old boy sneaks out of his bed at midnight and excitedly switches on the TV to see Spain defeating Netherlands 1-0 and clinching the FIFA World Cup title. Four years later, the boy saw Germany thrashing Argentina in the summit clash and being crowned as the World Champions. Years passed by but this beautiful sequence of following this quadrennial event still continues. However, one thing that the boy always laments is not seeing his own country, India perform in the biggest sporting event in the world.

In today's time, it won't be wrong to say that Indian sports department is heavily dominated by men's cricket, seeing it's vast popularity. However, there are millions of hearts in India who still beat for football. Whenever we think about India's participation in the FIFA World Cup, the first question that pops up in everyone's mind in regarding the investment in the grassroots.

Speaking of the grassroots, Rajasthan's Udaipur is gradually becoming a new hub of Indian football and Hindustan Zinc Limited are working round the clock for the same.

"Desh ka sapna, goal hai apna (Country's dream is our goal)"- moving ahead with this tagline, Hindustan Zinc Limited have set up the Zinc Football Academy in Zawar, a place located 40kms away from Udaipur.

Established in 2017, Zinc Football is part of Hindustan Zinc's social initiative - Vedanta Zinc Football & Sports Foundation. It follows a student-athlete model and lays special emphasis on providing an opportunity to children to play a large number of competitive matches so that they can get enough competition exposure and one day go on to represent the state or the national team.

"The whole idea behind all this is to produce better citizens for the country