New Delhi, Sep 2 (IANS) Vision India's 'Project Delhi', a brainchild of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), will launch an under-13 league for local schools starting Wednesday.

"The league is the first major step taken by the Project Delhi and 48 schools will be participating," said All Indian Football Federation (AIFF) secretary Alberto Colaco here Saturday.

The participating schools have been divided into six zones. In each zone, 28 matches of 50 minutes duration will take place. Each team will comprise of seven players. The last round of the league will be played Oct 18.

As an incentive for the students, the teams would be provided free kit by Boxer Sports Goods.

A four-member spotter committee has been formed, with the responsibility to spot talent at these matches.

"We have created the committee that will be spotting the talented. The talented would then be given training during school vacations," said Shaji Prabhakaran, director of Vision India.

From next year, the league will be played on home-and-away basis and there is a plan to include government schools also. This year, only private schools, the Army School and Central Reserve Police Force Public School are taking part in the league.

Prabhakaran also announced a similar school league would start in Manipur from Sep 9.

"Manipur project has been working fine. We don't have a sponsor there but the state government is helping us in all possible ways to make the project a hit," he said.

The AFC in association with the AIFF has also conducted an assessment of some other states recently, for the expansion of the project.

"Recently AFC officials visited Punjab, Chandigarh, Sikkim and Karnataka and reviewed the facilities there. Hopefully, we would see pilot projects in these states soon," said Prabhakaran.

Umesh Sood was appointed the working chairman of the Delhi Project and Syed Nasir Ali the coordinator.

"It is an honour for me and it is going to be a challenging task as well. I have always accepted challenges and with the support of all the members I shall get over it," said Sood.

Project Delhi is a part of Vision India, which was launched by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in September 2002 with the goal of developing infrastructure and raising the standard of the game in country.

The Vision Asia team submitted a report on India in 2004 and the pilot projects were launched in Delhi and Manipur.

For Delhi, the AIFF has got the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) to sponsor the school league and hence the project will be called the SAIL Vision India Project Delhi.

The implementation process of Project Delhi started with the formulation of the task force as per guidelines of AFC in July 2005.