Premier Futsal, the recently launched international futsal league, will be launching its nationwide talent hunt to identify top local futsalling prospects for the inaugural season.

The scouting process will be held across eight cities; the Mumbai leg kicks off on Sunday at Mumbai University’s ground in Kalina. A total of 40 players will be picked and five per city will go on to represent their home cities in the tournament.

Eight franchises — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Goa, Kochi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru will compete from July 15-24 in Premier Futsal, that already boasts of having on board soccer legend Luis Figo as its President and India’s run-machine Virat Kohli as brand ambassador.

“It’s a completely different talent pool that we are tapping into. India doesn’t have professional futsal players and by bringing in fitness scouts and having the right experts, we hope to bring in the first bunch of the talent who will go into the league. We want to create a talent pool for India,” Abhinandan Balasubramanian, CEO of Premier Futsal said on Thursday.

The course will look into two primary aspects — fitness and technical.

Fitness criteria will be monitoring the physical and mental capabilities of a player while the technical aspect will be used to supervise attributes like flair, creativity, positioning, dribbling, passing and tackling.

“I’m sure a sport as exciting, competitive and riveting as futsal will strike a chord with sports fans. I think it is a great initiative that will nurture local talent and help futsal establish itself firmly among India’s most followed sports,” Kohli said.

The idea of introducing the sport among the Indian youth was to gather the numerous five-a-side football tournaments the ‘maximum city’ has and bring it under one umbrella. And July seems a perfect month given that there’s no sporting action in that period.

“There are around 1,800- 2000 players (in the age group of 16-30) in each of the eight cities who play futsal every week,” he said.

“We will be the singular focal point for all these guys. We also wanted to have a very holistic build up to the first season. The players once picked will go into a pre-season training camp along with the international players for about three weeks and then five go directly into the city franchises. There will also be one marquee legend will be playing per team,” he added.

Mumbai trials from 8:00 am -12:00 pm, May 29-May 31, At Mumbai University Ground, Kalina Eligibility: Males between ages 18 and 24