APL

The Roshan Afghan Premier League’s (RAPL) new initiative of organizing football clinics in schools is building up interest and increasing football skills across Afghanistan. The initiative provides basic football training for thousands of school children in a total of 8 provinces. At the same time the clinics also provide messages to the children on living healthy and positive lives. The project’s ultimate goals are to discover talented young players who could be groomed as future potential Afghan professional footballers, and to provide all children hope and guidance towards a better life.

The clinics are supervised by the RAPL in association with the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) and have already taken place in a number of provinces. More clinics will be staged wherever RAPL regional tournaments (each of the 8 regional tournaments determines the player selection for the relevant RAPL team) are organized.

Successful clinics have been organized in: Kabul (Bibi Mahro High School & Abul Qasim Firdausi High School); Jalalabad (Nangarhar Lisa & Mia Omar Lisa); and in Kandahar Province (Ahmadshah Baba Lisa, Fazil Kandahari Lisa, Mirwais Nekah Lisa & Abdul Ahad Shaheed Lisa).

During the regional tournaments in each province at least two football clinics for hundreds of girls and boys have been or will be arranged. Kandahar was a special case where 4 clinics were held. The training and guidance at the clinics was provided by famous Roshan Afghan Premier League players from that region as well as coaches from the AFF.

The educational value of the clinics was enhanced by positive life-style messages conveyed to the school children from the RAPL stars. The messages were disseminated through discussions during the training sessions and via the distribution of football kit emblazoned with “Peace”, “Unity”, “Stay in School” or “Stay away from Drugs” in the local languages.

At the end of each clinic, small prizes were given to the winners of the various skills tests. T-shirts and other small merchandise again featuring positive messages were also distributed to participants.

The clinics were recorded by RAPL production teams and will be broadcast during the Maidan-e-Sabz shows in The Holy month of Ramadan.