MUMBAI: The Beautiful Game has just been given a major jumpstart in India with the coming together of iconic English soccer club Liverpool FC and the politically powerful Bharati Vidyapeeth, one of the largest private educational bodies in India, to launch a fully purposed football development centre in Pune.

Ian Ayre, commercial director of Liverpool and Steve Bellis, director of the global football promotion firm 'Kickworldwide', along with Vishwjeet Kadam, the host of the ‘Abhijit Kadam Football Development Centre’, shared details of this unique endeavor with SportzPower Monday.

For Kadam, Western India Football Association vice president and heir to the educational legacy built by Maharshtra Congress politicican Dr Patangrao Kadam, the centre is the culmination of efforts undertaken since 2007 by the Abhijit Kadam Memorial Foundation (AKMF), set up by him in his brother's memory.

Said Kadam, "The centre will be taking in children between the ages group of 10 to 16. Additionally, we would be offering one-year diploma courses for the older recruits where subjects like turf techniology, sports science and sports industry management would be taught so that there is something to fall back on if the children do not make it as professional footballers."

Students at the centre will be able to enroll on a number of football related courses, which are to be delivered in partnership with some leading UK colleges. The courses include, coaching, refereeing, Sports Science, Sports Turf technology and Football Industry Management. Most of the curriculum will be delivered in Pune but students will be offered the chance to complete some of their studies in the UK.

Aspiring young footballers will be able to combine their studies with football playing under the guidance of Liverpool FC coaches.

The Centre was officially launched to the media in Pune Monday and will open its doors to students in September to deliver courses in sports science, coaching and refereeing. Other courses will be added in January.

The Bharati Vidyapeeth ground in Pune is the venue for the football development centre, which is a joint venture between Liverpool and the AKMF. Describing the initiative as a football knowledge transfer programme, Ayre said, "We are all invested in this together to grow the game in the country. The key for us is to be able to impart our knowledge base across a variety of disciplines and at a deeper level to offer students and the community opportunities to associate with our brand. We will be investing time, skill, experience and resources into this venture."

The basic involvement of Liverpool will be to provide the technical expertise. "Since we are such a big club in Europe, we have our experts at all different levels. We have good coaches, pitch experts, commercial specialists. We are still discussing about the various levels at which we can be involved, apart from coaching," Ayre said.

Elaborating further, Ayre said that besides the football centre, there were a variety of other initiatives that Liverpool would be bringing to the market. To begin with there would be a stronger media presence, both on television as well as the web. Liverpool TV is broadcast to the whole of Asia on the Goal TV channels and the Singaporean Football Channel from the production facility in Dubai of Taj Television, which co-owns and operates leading sports broadcaster Ten Sports. In India, Liverpool TV airs as a programming block on Ten Sports' sister channel Zee Sports.