Sixteen young teams coming from various football associations in Mindanao will see action starting Wednesday when the first Mindanao Cup kicks off at Tionko Football Field in Davao City.
Using the nine-a-side format, the tournament is geared toward discovering talents that could hopefully play for the national team in the future, a truly grassroots development program being undertaken by Davao South Regional Football Association (DSRFA) and the Negros Occidental Football Association (Nofa).
Teams will be fielding players 11 years old and below, with the tournament being a spinoff to the highly successful Nofa Invitational Cup in Bacolod which has been going on since 2016.
Grassroots football godfather and Nofa president Ricky Yanson emphasized that the objective of the Mindanao Cup is to find hidden gems in the rough that would assure the turnover of talent in the national team in the years to come.
The tournament will run until Friday.
“Our goal is to develop young Filipino talents who can hopefully play for our national team in the future,” said Yanson, who partnered with DSRFA president Eng. Henry Sabate to stage the event.
“We already had four editions of the Nofa Cup. We noticed that only a few teams from Mindanao came over to join, so we’ve decided to organize a tournament that will cater to the young players in the region,” said Yanson.
While the Nofa Cup gathers teams from all over the Philippines, the Mindanao Cup brings together squads from the FAs in the region.
“This is a great opportunity for players in Mindanao to develop their skills and play against the best from the other provinces,” said Yanson.