At the age of fifteen when most of the students are busy dealing with parental pressure for grades and marks, Kumar Rathod’s mind is engaged with the challenges the turf will throw up at the Dietmar-Hopp-Stadion, the training school of German football club TSG 1899 Hoffenheim where he is to spend his next six years honing his skills. For Kumar, Hoffenheim, a village in Germany’s Karlsruhe administrative region with a population of around 4,000, will be a far cry from Cuffe Parade’s teeming Ambedkar Nagar slums, where he grew up seeing football dreams with his friends Sunil T Rathod, Sitaram Rathod and Sunil M Rathod.
The latter three Rathods, all unrelated to each other headed for the Queens Park Rangers Training Academy in London for a 15-day training programme. The training programmes have been funded by U Dream Football Project and Queens Park Rangers trust that groom and coach students belonging to low income families.
Source:http://goo.gl/ppgtIw
