Centro Sportivo Italiano, TIM and the Serie A League today signed a Protocol of Understanding to start a major alliance between the top and the bottom tiers of sport to promote playing football in parish youth centres, promoting a tournament for thousands of youngsters throughout Italy, called the “Junior TIM Cup – Il calcio negli Oratori”, which will start in February.
The signing of the Protocol creates a fund to promote football in Italian parish youth centres. The fund will benefit from a portion of the fines handed out by the Sports Judge to Serie A TIM players and clubs during the season, as well as a grant from TIM as “title sponsor” of the tournament.
The Centro Sportivo Italiano, TIM and the Serie A League are also undertaking to create a “Guarantee committee” which will determine how the resources are assigned throughout the country to support projects of proven educational value to train sports coaches, support youth teams as well as creating new facilities and supplying sports material.
The “Junior TIM Cup – Il calcio negli Oratori” fulfils the aims identified by CSI, TIM and the Serie A League: a youth football competition that celebrates not only sport, but the heritage of values, stories and good practice that constitutes the reference for the TIM “Il calcio è di chi lo ama (Football belongs to those who love it)” project.
The 7 a side football tournament for under-14s will feature parish youth centres of the 16 cities with teams in the TIM Serie A League for 2012-2013. The appeal of the competition will be further enhanced by the exceptional setting the participant teams will play in: some matches will in fact be played as pre-match games in stadiums used by teams in the TIM Serie A championship . The first appointment is for Saturday 2 February at the San Paolo stadium in Naples, which will host the Naples-Catania game.
The final phase of the Junior TIM Cup, for the best regional tournament winners, will take place in the Olympic Stadium in Rome, on the occasion of the 2013 TIM Cup final.
To promote a positive model to emulate, the tournament will have special visibility on social networks, thanks to emblematic stories about good sports practice.
“This is a historic signing – commented Massimo Achini, chairman of the CSI – that creates a great alliance with equal dignity, whose partners are joining together to share a great responsibility: showcasing the football played in educational facilities such as parish youth centres and considering them a wealth for the whole movement”.
“TIM has always played a part in Italian sport, particularly in football, with which it has had strong links for a long time. We are proud of this partnership with the Serie A League and CSI because we want to contribute to the rediscovery and dissemination of the true values of football through the youngsters who are the most genuine protagonists of this sport – declared Carlotta Ventura, Director of Domestic Media at Telecom Italia. For precisely this reason we have developed a strategy that is summed up in the slogan “il calcio è di chi lo ama (football belongs to those who love it)” which we will pursue, together with the most important protagonists of the most loved and most popular game in our Country. We thank the Serie A League and CSI who follow and support us, together with the media and all those people who, like us, want to play an active role in building value”.
“Promoting and developing football throughout the Country must be one of our priorities – said Maurizio Beretta, Chairman of the Serie A League. We are proud to allocate a significant percentage of the fines imposed by the Sports Judge to finance football in parish youth centres through the Junior TIM Cup project, in the awareness that this splendid initiative will allow thousands of youngsters throughout the whole of Italy to have fun and grow playing the sport we love the most”.
Milan, 09 January 2013
