A sprinter turned footballer in Bengaluru started a football club with his friends as a leisure activity. Then he went on to establish it as an academy and a training program, and professional players started training there. Fast forward to 2024, the club has 2 teams in men’s and women’s categories and is seriously pushing for Super Division of BDFA. Sounds crazy, right; The story of Technico Football Foundation (TFF) can be summed up in this one paragraph.

Vivek Menzel, a Malayali who was raised in Bengaluru, was interested in athletics as a youngster. Now an architect by profession, he is the fulcrum of TFF.

“The way football training was being done in the 1990s was inspired by athletics. I found it rudimentary as football requires something else. So, I had an aim at the back of my mind to start something substantial in the football sector”, said Vivek.

On being asked about the football scene of Bengaluru and what sets his club apart, Vivek had this to say: “Thankfully we are not inventing anything new regarding the running of a successful footballing system. There are many examples for us to follow and thereby it is up to us to use the right examples and build a sustainable footballing ecosystem.

Our first endeavor is to create a year-round training program and ensure that we play the maximum number of competitive matches per year. At Technico, we play an average of 45 competitive matches per year, and our senior men’s team played 56 competitive matches this year.

A year-round training programme and further a large number of competitive matches help us learn, fine-tune and grow the system year on year!

There are many good footballing systems already prevalent in Bangalore. But Technico stands apart with its use of technology. Usually, body trackers and game analytics are reserved for the elite, but we use them from the grassroots to the elite seniors. This will help cultivate an analytical mind from the grassroots all the way up, making the process of understanding and deciphering these details easier for all players as they grow.“

Vivek, who defines himself as an architect during the day and a footballer by night, calls his project an academy born out of passion but driven completely by technology and professionalism.

“You cannot grow what you cannot measure”.

“This is the reason we lean into technology as much as we do. All aspects of movement on the pitch can be measured by various technological apparatuses to give us accurate data on various aspects of a player or a team together.

Video analysis has made giant leaps in helping us ascertain the above with the inclusion of AI and the support of our analytic partner Step Out, we’re able to understand many aspects of gameplay, tactical patterns as well as individual movements of players.

Data on speed, acceleration, deceleration, movements heat map patterns, overall distance run, and directional runs by players are all generated by trackers worn on the person that is supported by our second partner, Footrax.

Understanding analytics and decoding the data to use it powerfully is a science in itself. At Technico, we invest a serious amount of time and effort in studying and learning how to read and decipher data.

Players can understand their movements on the pitch through videos and data that help them realize areas there that require work. Coaches can instruct more specifically rather than generally with the data-driven responses to common player problems’, told Vivek.

What started as a small semi-professional club by Vivek and his friends as a leisure time activity later transformed into a professional club in 2010. They named the club C2 Football Club because they were named so when they were in the C Group of a locally organized tournament.

“We conducted a trial for 3 spots in our C2 team and to our surprise, 70 players turned out. The players who couldn’t make it requested us to allow them to train with us. That is how the concept of an academy came to my mind. Then my concept was a training facility and a program in which players from any team can train with us and play for their respective team.“

The training sessions of the Technico (which evolved from C2 FC) were good and players from BDFA senior divisions and I-League 2 have trained there.

“We even had a contract with the Ivorian Football Association. A few Ivory Coast players trained under us who played for Salgaocar FC. They conveyed to their country’s association about us. We signed an agreement with the FA, however, due to the COVID pandemic and some technical issues, that project didn’t materialize,” Vivek continued.

The Technico Football Foundation came in its current form in 2018. Vivek heads the technical side and his wife, Alisha, is the Director of the foundation.

At present, there are two teams each in the men’s and women’s category which are participating in various divisions of the football pyramid. The men’s teams play in the A and C divisions of BDFA and the ladies play in the A and B divisions. The average age of the teams is near 20.

“We have just established the organization that can receive CSR funding under the name of Technico Excellence Foundation. Until now, we have not sought any external funding or sponsorship because we believe that we will need to give back value to our sponsors as well!

Now that we have picked up a few trophies and also have the presence of 2 teams in the A-division (Men and Women), we have some capability to add value to the sponsors, so we will reach out. Further, with the establishment of Technico Excellence Foundation, we will look to expand our outreach to create opportunities for the talent who truly need it.

The immediate plan for the U15 and U17 players is to get them ready for the D, C, and A divisions respectively, since we have teams in all these categories. Depending on the ability of the new recruits, they will play in the above-mentioned divisions. Our vision for the future of Indian football is to ensure that we have a large number of 16 and 17-year-old players who are competing for the top spot of the highest leagues in the country. We plan to have 70% of our senior team players from our academy.”

The grand vision of the Technico team is to have both their men’s and women’s teams playing in the I-league/IWL. But they would like to ensure a robust and successful grassroots programme.

“We would want our players to grow through the system. #theTFFway is to ensure that our top tier player have found success through our system and climbed their way to the top and not have the senior team full of “bought-out” players.

Overall, we want to make football a successful sport for all who are involved in it. Not just the players, but the coaches, assistant coaches, S&C coaches, physios, nutritionists, hostel and boarding staff, chefs, venue managers, kit managers, and all the support staff. We want everyone to make a career out of football with our main pillars at the helm of everything we do.”