India U17 women’s football team gets new partner in Coca-Cola

The All India Football Federation (AIFF) have announced a new partnership Coca-Cola, which will see the global beverage brand support the Indian women’s U17 team. The three-year deal will see Coca-Cola join as an Official Sponsor of the U17 women’s team with the goal of the partnership being to support the game at the grassroot level through ‘structured and tournament-led sponsorship’.

Coca-Cola will work on supporting the players in enhancing their performance by providing access to improved coaching standards, advanced training programmes, and greater international exposure through overseas tours and more.

Kalyan Chaubey, President, AIFF, said,

“The support will be used to hire a world class coach for the team and to help the girls travel overseas as part of their preparation for the AFC Asian cup. You don’t generally see corporates fund age group tournaments. Rather they invest monies on established stars who have a certain brand value and for a corporate to break the clutter and do something as special as supporting the U17 women’s football team, it does take vision and far sight. I am hugely hopeful of Indian women’s football. Never before has it happened that three teams from India have made the Asian Cup. When the team had qualified for the last time 23 years back, it was based on an invitation and not purely on merit. This time round it is all based on their performance and wins against Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzistan. If things go as planned, they do have a realistic chance of making the World Cup and if that happens, it will be a massive moment for the sport in India.

‘In recent times Indian football has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The delay in starting the top tier league created a lot of negativity and to come out of it was difficult. The women too were getting impacted by it. In such a backdrop for a big brand to back the U17 girls comes as a breath of fresh air for the sport.”

Satyanarayan, Deputy Secretary General of AIFF, commented,

“To receive support for three years from Coca Cola could be transformative. We will do our best to give the girls the best preparation possible and then we can all hope and pray that they deliver on the big stage.”