• Home
• /
• Football

Al Jazira launches schools programme

ABU DHABI — The Al Jazira FC has come up with a novel way to get the community involved and also strengthen their fan base.

The club has launched a schools programme where players from the club will go to the schools and speak about football and its benefits and invite them to get involved with the club.

“The schools programme is basically trying to reach out to hundreds of thousands of school children and their parents who are in Abu Dhabi, whether they are local or expatriates and trying to have a connection with them. If you want to build a fan base, you need to have a connection. It needs to be an emotional connection. People need to feel they want to come to matches. And there is nothing better in my view than to have players actually turning up, meeting youngsters and inviting them to get involved with the club. So, we are going to be going out there every week with our players. The players will be asked to do that. I’m sure they will enjoy doing that, meeting all the children,” Phil Anderton, CEO of the club, told the Khaleej Times.

As part of their initiative to make football another option of entertainment, Al Jazira distributed half-season passes through various channels. They can be changed to full-season passes. The club has handed out specific passes to schools in Abu Dhabi.

“We are also giving each school their own specific passes and they will be registered up on the computer. So, every time a pupil or parents or teachers from that school goes to a game, we will register that on the computer and then we will give rewards back to that school, whether it is equipment or transport or whatever it is that particular school wants to have. So, we are building relationships with each of those schools,”” Anderton said.

Andertson said that they would be inviting individual schools to come to specific matches where they will make it their match. “We are going to be inviting individual schools to come to specific matches where we will make it their match and we will arrange transport for them. We will invite all the head teachers to come. We will obviously have the children there. The children will be mascots on the pitch and they will take the team out,” he said.

Anderton said that the club was also sponsoring a football league and added that the final could be played on the main pitch of the Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium.

“We are also sponsoring a football league and it is going to be called the Al Jazira Football League, which is an existing football league that a number of schools have pulled together. We are going to provide them with equipment, coaches and publicity. And one day, we hope to see the final of the schools league and the new cup that we are going to be introducing, played out on the main pitch here at Al Jazira,” said the club official.

Anderton said that they were encouraging schools to come and visit their facilities on non-match days. “We also want to encourage schools to come to our facilities on non-match days so that they can use our indoor arena where they can play five-a-side football. We also want to encourage schools to come along and do a tour of the facilities that we have got here, which is one of the best facilities in the Middle East, if not the world. It is a fantastic facility which everyone can be really proud of. So, we are just engaging with youngsters across Abu Dhabi and hope they fall in love with this club and want to come and support it for years to come,” he said.

james@khaleejtimes.com