AIFF mark 'Grassroots Day' to celebrate football legend Pradip Kumar Banerjee's birth anniversary
Jun 24, 2023
Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], June 24 : To commence India's Legendary football player Pradip Kumar Banerjee's birth anniversary, the All India Football Federation marked AIFF Grassroots Day on Friday at the AIFF NCE in Kolkata, as an initiative to encourage grassroots participation in football.
Under the BlueCubs program, over 150 kids from different age groups participated the in the PK Banerjee Rolling Trophy.
AIFF shared the pictures on their Twitter handle.
As football in India has changed, evolved, and experienced highs and lows over almost nine decades, the Federation had decided to mark the auspicious day of June 23 as the AIFF Grassroots Day, with the aim of improving football from the ground up.
The Federation had already announced its intent to create a long-term plan for the development of football, Vision 2047. The Blue Cubs initiative that was launched earlier this year, with the aim of creating an extensive and robust grassroots structure across the country, will play a key role in improving the level of football.
Born on June 23, 1936, in Jalpaiguri, Banerjee is widely regarded as one of India's greatest footballers and was India's highest goalscorer with four goals en route to Gold Medal in the 1962 Asian Games. In a glittering international career, Banerjee played two Olympics (1956, 1960) and three Asian Games (1958, 1962, 1966) and was the first footballer to receive the prestigious Arjuna Award in the year of its inception, 1961.
He was conferred with Padma Shri in 1990. In 1969, when FIFA ran its first coaching course in Japan under German coach Dettmar Cramer, known as the 'Football Professor' in the international circuit, PK enrolled himself for the course and returned home with a First-Class degree. Among many first, he achieved as a coach was a football coaching course he ran on Doordarshan for many weeks. He passed away on March 20, 2020, in Kolkata.
