Milan launches first free-of-charge football school: 30 children at Comasina with no fees

Registration, sports kit, match tickets: everything is free. The first completely zero-cost Football School is being born at Comasina, North Milan's outskirts, as reported by Il Giorno.

The project is called "Che Assist!" and was designed by Alessandro Crisafulli, a journalist, teacher and sports manager from Brianza with years of experience in youth football. The initiative has the support of Asd Sport Prime and Asi Lombardia, as well as the interest of Municipal District 9.

How it works

The football school will welcome 30 children aged 5 to 11, with no selection process either at entry or exit, with different age groups trained together as used to happen at parish clubs. Training sessions will last two hours, divided between games of road safety, environmental, civic and food education, multisport activities such as basketball and volleyball, and free-form football.

Sports clothing kits will be donated by a Milan-based startup that applies circular economy principles to children's clothes, including sports wear, along with some sponsors. Open days will be held on October 10, 17 and 24 at the Sport Promotion Comasina center on via Salemi, on covered synthetic fields.

"This way happiness multiplies," said Crisafulli, explaining that the goal is to create "a new sports culture" starting from the basics. On the children's jerseys will appear the words "Give back our Game to us".

The cost issue

The president of Municipal District 9, Anita Pirovano, stressed that "sport must be a right for everyone" but it often isn't guaranteed, especially in neighborhoods where, she said, "educational poverty has a major impact".

As noted in a comment also published by Il Giorno, the costs of having a child play a sport—registration, annual fee, medical visit, transportation, equipment—have risen over the years, and for many families on the margins of city prosperity they become an insurmountable obstacle. Existing support measures, such as the "sports allowance" from the Lombardy Region, remain limited to 100 euros for a single child and to specific income brackets.

Crisafulli, who has already trained over 13,000 parents across Italy with the "Sports Parents School" project, aims to expand the numbers from the second year, bringing registered students to 50, and says he has already received requests from other Italian cities interested in replicating the model.