From no team to national finals – Lala’s FC enjoy instant success
A group of youngsters who simply wanted to play football, but had no team to enter with, are now preparing to walk out at Manchester's AO Arena for national finals – all because one West Yorkshire restaurant owner refused to accept that the answer had to be no.
The story began with something painfully simple – a handful of boys from the Wakefield area asked to join a local team and were told there was no room. Squads were full. The doors were closed.
They were kids who wanted nothing more than to play and through no fault of their own they had nowhere to do it. One parent, unwilling to let that be the end of the story, approached Junior Rashid, owner of Lala's Restaurants in Pudsey, Wakefield and Huddersfield, and asked whether he might be able to help.
Junior did not hesitate for a second and Lala's funded the newly formed team's entry into the Leeds Regional 3v3 Qualifier, provided brand-new kits, covered every tournament cost and gave the children the one thing they had been missing all along – a team of their own.
Lala's Football Club was born with a squad of seven under 8s (moving up to U9s next season), with four players rotating on the pitch for each 3v3 fixture and one substitute in reserve.
A team that had not existed a few weeks earlier suddenly had a shirt, a badge and a reason to believe and what happened next belonged in a film script.
Despite playing their first-ever competitive matches together as a team against opposition who had trained and played side by side for years, Lala's FC did not just compete, they also announced themselves.
Up against more than 60 teams entered across all age groups in the Leeds qualifier, the newly assembled squad won three of their four group games, suffering only one narrow defeat, before brushing aside the quarter-final and cruising through the semis with the kind of composure usually reserved for clubs with years of history behind them.
In the final, Lala's FC produced a breathtaking attacking display to beat Frame 2 by nine goals to four and became Leeds Regional Champions on their tournament debut.
Their reward is a place at the National Finals at the AO Arena in Manchester on August 29, where regional champions from across the country will meet on one of the UK's most iconic indoor sporting stages, in front of thousands of spectators.
It is a fairytale story with the community rallying round the youngsters in a way that makes this story as much about people as it is about football.
One parent, Nathan, a fully qualified football coach, stepped forward to coach the newly formed side even though it had no coaching structure, no training ground routine, and no time to prepare.
Other parents pulled together to make sure every child could get to the tournament, including one mother who travelled by bus early on Sunday morning to meet another family for a lift, determined that her son would not miss the chance he had been denied everywhere else.
For Junior Rashid, who built Lala's Restaurants from a single site in Pudsey into three thriving restaurants across West Yorkshire, over more than 15 years, the decision to back the team was never about results on the pitch. It was about people, and about making sure that no child in his community was left standing on the sidelines simply because there was not a team for them.
“When I heard there were children who wanted to play football but couldn’t, simply because there wasn’t a team for them, I didn’t think twice,” he said.
"Every child deserves the opportunity to enjoy sport, make friends and create memories. This was never about winning trophies – it was about giving these children a chance they'd been denied everywhere else.
"None of us imagined this on day one. To go from having no team at all to becoming regional champions and now heading to Manchester is genuinely unbelievable. I’m incredibly proud of every one of those boys and just as proud of their parents for the way they've come together.”
Junior has now announced plans to launch a Lala's Football Foundation, designed to remove financial barriers that stop children taking part in football and wider sport, covering the cost of kits, tournament entries and equipment completely free of charge for local families.
The ambition is to expand Lala's FC into further age groups and to support grassroots sport more widely across West Yorkshire, giving children an alternative to screens and streets, and a reason to believe in what's possible no matter where they're starting from.
Lala's Restaurants has also committed to fully funding the team's trip to Manchester, including new kits for the National Finals, travel, meals and a celebration to mark the occasion for every child and family involved.