In line with its commitment to talent development and football excellence, LaLiga is set to roll out LaLiga Grassroots in Ghana, a program offering talents from across the country the next step in their football development pathway.

This was revealed during a lively engagement held by LaLiga Ghana and Nigeria representatives with the Ghanaian media in Accra on Wednesday.

The project is LaLiga’s global initiative to support, promote and strengthen grassroots football worldwide.

Over the last 5 years, LaLiga Grassroots has facilitated 640 projects globally through 900 LaLiga coaches in 48 countries. As a result, more than 200,000 male and female players and more than 25,000 coaches have been trained using the LaLiga methodology. This includes the elements that make Spanish youth academies a global reference.

With Ghana set to be one of the latest beneficiaries, the LaLiga delegation held positive talks with key stakeholders in the country – the Ghana Football Association and the Ministry of Youth and Sports.

Taking the media through the LaLiga Grassroots concept, Commu­nications and Projects Coordinator, Ayodeji Adegbenro stated:

“We thought of this stuff in Nigeria and some other parts of Africa but we are keen to actually start with Ghana because Ghana is a very important country to LaLiga and the LaLiga projects.

“We’ve had the project in South Africa, Zambia, Nigeria and Cameroon. We don’t have Ghana yet but hopefully, very soon Ghana will show up. An example of one of our projects is LaLiga egalite in Cameroon. It is basically a youth league for girls that started about two years ago. We train grassroots female coaches to train these girls.

“We’ve had meetings with the GFA and the Sports Ministry and we are hoping to replicate some of these projects in Ghana to aid the development of football at grassroots level.”

LaLiga Global Network Delegate for Ghana and Nigeria, Desmond Chiji also said: “The grassroots project is a big project for us. We believe so much in it as the next stage of our development. We would want to go into the cities and try and unearth the younger talents to give them this opportunity. This is something that we’ve experimented in other countries and we believe it is the next stage that we have to take our development to. It is a very interesting project for us, the stakeholders and potential partners to get on board.”

As part of LaLiga’s frameworks designed to facilitate knowledge sharing, Deportivo Alaves, Cádiz CF, Sevilla FC and Villarreal CF have collaborated with clubs and academies in the host countries, providing a means of sharing training methodologies and practices with grassroots leaders.

The heart of LaLiga Grassroots is located in Spanish capital Madrid, where the ESC LaLiga & NBA Centre opened its doors in the summer of 2022, becoming the hub of LaLiga’s grassroots football projects. The centre’s main focus is LaLiga Academy Madrid — a long-term academic and sporting programme open to young footballers from all over the world. The centre also hosts LaLiga Training Stages, intensive training and coaching stays for clubs and federations from all over the world; LaLiga Camps, summer football training camps; and it also hosts different scouting projects.