Semarang Becomes The Closing Of The 2024 Soccer Challenge MilkLife Series

MilkLife Soccer Challenge 2024 Series 2 Semarang (doc. MilkLife).

JAKARTA The series of MilkLife Soccer Challenge competitions during 2024 officially ended in Series 2 Semarang which took place at Diponegoro University Stadium, Tembalang, on Sunday, December 22, 2024.

Statistics show that the women's soccer event for an early age achieved extraordinary success this year. This can be seen from the increase in the number of participants which rose very significantly.

Djarum Foundation's Director of Sports, Yoppy Rosimin, is so grateful for the high participation rate. He said that this made their big dream of scoring quality players is not an impossible result.

"The achievement throughout 2024 makes us optimistic that this dream can be realized because we realize that interest in women's football in Indonesia is quite high," he said in a statement.

Semarang is one of the eight cities that organize the initiation of the Djarum Foundation and MilkLife Sports Service.

The other seven cities are Kudus, Surabaya, Jakarta, Tangerang, Bandung, Solo, and Yogyakarta. A total of 17 times the implementation involved Ibtidaiyah madrasah (MI) students and elementary schools (SD).

In the first series, the total number of students participating was 5,163. A sharp spike then occurred in the second series with the number of participants reaching 10,885 students, an increase of 110 percent.

"In the second series, the community, parents, and schools have started to believe and finally many participated. This is very encouraging and we hope that in the coming years the interest will be higher," said Yoppy.

During this year's tournament, the organizers monitored potential talents in each city. Participants with qualified quality according to parameters will get special training.

The MilkLife Soccer Challenge Director, Teddy Tjahjono, explained that participants who have qualified quality will then be honed and directed to soccer school (SSB).

"This is part of building a women's soccer ecosystem at an early age level which is expected to supply quality players at the next age level," explained Teddy.

Before being directed into SBB, the potential seeds will be polished first in the MilkLife Extra Training program. This program is led by Timo Scheunemman, a coach with an UEFA A license.

Potential players from each holding city will form a team to compete in the MilkLife Soccer Challenge All Stars which will be held at the end of January 2025 in Kudus.

Seri 2 Semarang closed with the victory of SDN Sendangmulyo 02 in the age group (KU) 12 category. The team won after losing SDN Karanganyar Gunung 02 with a score of 4-0.

As for the KU-10 sector, SDN Klepu 03 managed to beat SD Nasima in a quite dramatic match. The match ended in a 2-2 draw so that the winner was awarded a penalty.