Living to their promise of bringing the city of Pune together with an all-inclusive movement, the Rajesh Wadhawan Group and Hrithik Roshan co-owned Indian Super League (ISL) team FC Pune City have announced the beginning of their community engagement festival called ‘Forces Of Football’ on Tuesday.

To bring the entire city under the spell of the beautiful game, FC Pune City will conduct football tournaments as part of the initiative for development of football in Pune via mass participation. The club aims to bring in over 5000 people to participate at various levels. FC Pune City CEO Gaurav Modwel felt that besides creating awareness about the club, such an initiative would also bring football enthusiasts at all levels on one common ground.

“We need to align and integrate all the forces of football to catapult Pune City into a new bastion of Indian football. Ours is a young city and no doubt with huge talent potential, need of the hour is to provide platforms for nurturing the talent and exhibit it. As a starter, we want more than 5000 people from various clubs, corporates, schools and colleges to play under one roof,” explained Modwel.

Three layered tournaments will be conducted as part of the program; first being 5-a-side tourney for all clubs registered with the Pune District Football Association (PDFA). This tournament will bring out all PDFA registered players representing their own clubs. The draws will be random and pitch clubs from all the different divisions can be pitched against one another. This gives every team at all levels an equal playing field and chances of an upset adds to the excitement and competitiveness.

Corporates will be tapped through a 6-a-side event that connect the club with the players from corporate teams who are passionate about football. Corporate football is very popular in Pune and the idea is to attract teams and give them a feel of being a part of city’s most famous football club.

Then there is also an Open Tournament where players from any club, corporates, friends or any walk of life can make their own team and participate in this 5-a-side event. The idea is to connect with each and every football player who has finished his schooling.

“We felt that to add more volume to our ever-increasing fan base, we need to create platforms where we can directly get in touch with football enthusiasts at all levels and showcase them our commitment. Nothing better than bringing them all together and play the sport actually,” Hrithik Roshan, the club’s co-owner and Bollywood superstar explained.

FC Pune City aims to make this an annual feature every year. This edition will be held at Green Box 1 & 2 and be played over every Friday, Saturday & Sunday starting from the 29th August 2015 till end of September 2015. The winners will get attractive gifts besides some cash prize and also an opportunity to meet the club’s players.